Angel Fever

14

THE GROUND TREMBLED UNDER my feet as the entire centre of the camp exploded. With a roar that shook the earth, buildings went up in a wild fountain of flame, cement, and smoke, brilliant against the blue sky.

“No!” I screamed.

I’d been sensing Alex’s rapid heartbeat – his near-certainty that he’d die. Now, for a brief, endless flash, his agony crushed me. Blown apart, wrenched into pieces – so much pain—

His heart gave a last weak beat…and then stopped.

Emptiness.

Before I could take it in, a wall of air slammed into me. I was knocked flat on my back, gasping for breath – dimly aware of rubble falling all around, thumping into the sand.

Muscular arms pinned me in place. “Keep down!” Sam yelled in my ear.

“Let go!” I cried, struggling wildly. “Let go of me!”

Somehow I got away and was running again, sprinting as fast as I could. It had all taken only seconds; now a terrible, chilly silence lay over everything. Debris lay scattered across the desert. A billowing cloud of dust and smoke rose from the camp.

The gate was half flattened, mowed down by flying shards of concrete. I scrambled over the barbed wire and lunged across the chain-link diamonds with a clatter.

“Alex!” I shouted as I ran into the enclosure. “Alex!”

Dust hit me, so thick I could barely see. Eyes streaming, I kept going, stumbling over the rubble-strewn pavement to the ruined centre of the camp, a scorched crater filled with debris and dust. Smoke drifted up into the sky.

Alex’s father’s house was gone. So were half a dozen buildings around it.

He could still be alive, I thought frantically, dropping into the hole. After the earthquakes, some of our AKs had survived for days trapped in collapsed buildings. Falling to my knees, I saw what looked like part of an angel’s wing drawn on a chunk of concrete – I barely noticed it as I hefted it aside, and then the piece after that, and another.

“Alex!” I called. “Please, answer me!”

As I dug, I scanned desperately. His energy always came so quickly – as if our love were an arrow leading me straight to him. Now there was nothing. I kept scanning, shaking so hard I could barely think.

Nothing. And I’d known that already…because I’d felt him die.

My mind flinched from the knowledge. “Alex!” I yelled again, still digging feverishly, bloodying my fingers against the dusty shards of concrete.

Slow footsteps came from behind me – the sound of someone dropping down into the crater. Then I felt Sam’s hand, warm and heavy on my shoulder.

His voice was ragged. “It’s no use, darlin’.”

“It is – it is!”

Sam crouched next to me. His eyes were red-rimmed. “Willow. Do a scan. The only ones still alive here are us.”

I shook my head hard, not even pausing as I dug. “No. No. You’re doing it wrong. He’s alive – he has to be.”

Then I saw it. My throat thickened, words leaving me. The piece of concrete I was holding slipped from my fingers, landing with a dull scraping noise. In a daze, I stretched across the wreckage to pick up what I’d seen.

Alex’s shoe.

A small moan escaped me as I turned it over in my hands – realized distantly that I was trembling. A battered once-white sneaker, now covered in dust and a streak of blood. I’d seen him put it on just yesterday, leaning over as he sat on the bed, his dark hair falling across his forehead.

An ice pick stabbed at my temples. The sense of being blown apart – his warm life-energy coming to an end. Oh god, I’d actually felt it.

I’d felt it.

“No!” The word tore painfully from my throat. I clutched the shoe to myself, hunching over it as I began to rock.

Without speaking, Sam pulled me into his arms. I dropped the shoe and clutched blindly at him, gripping his T-shirt – my hands like claws as I started to sob against his chest, my body heaving.

“I know,” he choked out, his strong arms tightening around me. “I know.”

After a long time, Sam helped me up and got us both back to the truck.

“What was he even doing?” I whispered hoarsely, staring at the remains of the camp. The smoke had all dispersed now and the dust had settled, as if the ruins had lain undisturbed for centuries.

In the driver’s seat, Sam scraped a hand over his jaw. I could sense he was trying to keep control. “Aw, hell, I don’t know.” His voice broke. “From what you said, something to do with using the earth’s energy field.”

I was still holding Alex’s shoe, my nails gouging into the leather. “Yes, but what? I wouldn’t have thought that was even possible!”

“I guess it wasn’t,” Sam said flatly.

I stared at the shattered buildings. When I spoke again, my voice was thin. “We can’t just…leave him here.”

Sam rubbed his forehead, looking forty-three instead of twenty-three. “There may not – be much left,” he said dully. “Anyway, it’d take us weeks to sift through all that. Unless…”

I shook my head woodenly. There was nothing left of Alex’s essence to latch onto.

Sam took a breath. “You know, this is…not really a bad place for him to be. He loved it here, growing up. He told me. And I think his father and brother are buried nearby.”

Any moment I’d wake up and find Alex in bed next to me, pulling me into his arms – his warm lips nuzzling at my neck. I shut my eyes hard. “Yeah, they are,” I said finally.

Inside, I was screaming – wordless, anguished screams, over and over. Alex was only nineteen. We were supposed to have a whole long life together. It wasn’t supposed to be that, instead, he’d felt forced to take some insane risk that he’d lied to me about.

Suddenly, I was shaking. What had it been? What had Alex thought was this important? Without thinking, I grounded myself and reached out for the earth’s energy field. The chaotic power roared over me as I tried to grasp hold. My angel was huddled deep inside me, stunned with grief; I felt her struggle feebly as the ethereal storm battered at us.

“Willow?” said Sam.

The force was whistling past, yanking at my aura – threatening to rip it away. Alex, what was it? Please, I’ve got to know!

“Willow!” Sam was shaking me. “Get out of it!”

With a gasp, my connection with the energy field broke. When I opened my eyes again, my cheeks were freshly damp. “I don’t know what he was doing,” I whispered brokenly. “I don’t know how to – to fix it.”

Sam was glaring at me, his eyes still red. “Christ, if that wasn’t a damn-fool thing to do! You think we want to lose you, too?”

I didn’t answer. Whatever Alex’s father’s plan had been, it was gone.

So was Alex.

I saw again the angels, invading our world and becoming unlinked. Alex, putting on a brave face, despite thinking it was his fault. None of this would have happened otherwise – he’d still be alive now.

The thoughts hammered relentlessly at my skull. “I’m going to Denver,” I said.

Sam turned his head and stared at me. “What for?” he asked after a pause, sounding wary.

“Because I have to find Raziel.”

“Willow, please start making some sense pretty damn quick, ’cause you’re freaking me out.”

My knuckles were white against Alex’s shoe. “This is all Raziel’s fault. He’s the one who unlinked the angels, the one who destroyed the Council and caused the earthquakes. Sam, don’t you see? It’s all him – everything bad that happens is him.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Sam said harshly. “So what are you gonna do? March into his Eden and demand an apology?”

“No. I’m going to make sure he never does it again.”

Sam straightened and pulled the keys out of his jeans pocket. “You’re in shock,” he said shortly. “I’m gettin’ you home.”

All at once my voice was ringing through the cab. “What home? I am serious, Sam – I cannot just go back and do nothing! Alex is dead! Dead, don’t you get it?”

“Yes, I get it!” he bellowed back. “What you don’t get is that it would be goddamn suicide!”

“I am going to Denver,” I said. “You can come, or not – I don’t care.”

Sam gripped my arms hard. “Listen to me,” he growled. “If you want to go runnin’ off to Denver, fine; I can’t stop you. But you would be putting the entire team in danger, and probably killing yourself in the bargain. Do you think that’s what Alex would want? Do you think he’s watching from somewhere right now, sayin’, Yeah, go get him, Willow!”

Something snapped in me. “I don’t care what he’d want!” I screamed. “I can’t just do nothing!”

The truck was suffocating me. Somehow I got the door open and collapsed out onto the desert ground. I wrapped my arms over my head as I struggled to breathe, and felt some small part of my mind try to detach itself from this pain – from the low, keening noise I was making; the way I was rocking in place, fingernails clutching my scalp, lungs clenched tight.

Alex.

Sam came and kneeled beside me. I felt his rough hand rest on my head. “I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do,” he said. “Just what Alex said – keep on recruiting and training people. That’s the only hope humanity’s got now. We need you, Willow. You can run off and get yourself killed, but it won’t accomplish a goddamn thing.”

Eventually I managed to sit up, trembling. Sam gripped my hand, his blue eyes intense. “Alex loved you,” he said in a low voice. “He never thought you were a quitter.”

I couldn’t speak. All I wanted was to confront my father – blow his halo into nothing and hope he felt just a fraction of the pain that Alex had felt, that I was feeling.

But I knew Sam was right. And as I gazed at the ruins where Alex lay, something inside me hardened. I would fight the angels until the day I died, if that’s what it took.

“I’m not a quitter,” I said finally.

Sam put his arm around me; I leaned against his broad chest. He held me silently for a few moments, then kissed my head. “Come on, angel chick,” he whispered. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”

We got back into the truck, and Sam started the engine. I felt as if I were made of glass – one wrong move, and I’d break. As Sam glanced back at the wreckage, his face was set in stone.

“Goodbye, bud,” he murmured. “Hope to hell it was worth it.”

I couldn’t say goodbye to Alex. Not now, not ever. But I turned and watched the shattered remains of the camp grow smaller in the rear window, along with the sun sparkling off Alex’s truck.

I watched until long after they’d vanished, and the only things still visible were the low mountains on the horizon, etched against the sky.