Angelfall

CHAPTER 39

Something slams into the angel. I get a brief impression of hair and teeth, animal growling.

Something warm and wet splashes onto my shirt.

The pressure on my throat is suddenly gone. So is the weight of the angel.

I suck in a huge, burning breath. I curl into a ball, trying not to cough too much as the lovely cool air surges into my lungs.

There is blood on my shirt.

I become aware of wild grunts and growls. There is also the sound of retching.

The delivery man is retching behind his cadaver drawers. Even while retching, his eyes keep darting to a spot behind me. His eyes are so wide they look more white than brown. He’s staring at the place where the sounds are coming from. The source of all this blood soaking my clothes.

I have a strange reluctance to look even though I know I have to.

When I do look, I have trouble comprehending what I'm seeing. I don't know which thing to be shocked by, and my poor brain thrashes from one thing to another.

The angel's lab coat is soaked in blood Around him lie chunks of quivering meat, like bits of liver torn and tossed on the floor.

A chunk of flesh has been ripped out of his cheek.

He’s thrashing so much he looks like he's in the throes of a very bad nightmare. Maybe he is. Maybe I am too.

Paige hunches over him. Her little hands grip his shirt to get a better hold on his trembling body. Her hair and clothes are splattered in blood. Her face drips with it.

Her mouth opens, showing rows of shiny teeth. At first, I think that someone has grafted long braces onto her teeth. But they’re not braces.

They’re razors.

She bites into the angel's throat. Worries it like a dog with a chew toy. Pulls back from the gushing torn flesh.

She spits out a chunk of bloody meat. It lands with a wet thunk on the floor next to the other bits of flesh.

She spits and gags. She is revolted, although it’s hard to tell if the revulsion is from her actions or from the taste. An unwanted memory of the way the low demons spat after biting into Raffe barges into my head.

They weren’t meant to eat angel flesh. The thought slips through the cracks in my mind and I instantly shove it back.

The delivery guy retches again, and my stomach churns, wanting to join him. Paige opens her mouth again in animal ferocity, ready to dive back into the quivering flesh.

“Paige!” My voice comes out thin and panicked, the end rising as though in question.

The girl who used to be my sister stops midway down to the dying angel and looks at me.

Her eyes are the wide baby brown of innocence. Drops of blood hang suspended from her long lashes. She looks at me, attentive and docile as she's always been. There is no pride in her expression, no viciousness, no hunger, no horror at her actions. She looks up at me as though I had called her name while she was eating a bowl of cereal.

My throat is raw from the strangling, and I keep swallowing back a cough, which is handy because I need to swallow back my dinner too. The puking sounds the delivery guy makes aren’t helping.

Paige unfolds away from the angel. She stands up on her own feet, without leaning against anything.

Then she takes two graceful, miraculous steps toward me.

She stops, as though remembering she was crippled.

I don’t dare to breathe. I stare at her, resisting the urge to run up and catch her in case she falls.

She spreads her arms out toward me in a pick-me-up gesture, the way she used to when she was a toddler. If not for the blood dripping down her face and streaking her stitched-up body, I would have thought her expression as sweet and innocent as it's always been.

“Ryn-Ryn.” Her voice is on the verge of tears. It's the sound of a frightened little girl, one who's sure her big sister can make the monsters under her bed go away. Paige hasn't called me Ryn-Ryn since she was a baby.

I look at the angry stitches crisscrossing her face and body. I stare at her bruises—red and blue all over her poor face and body.

It’s not her fault. Whatever they did to her, she’s the victim, not the monster.

Where have I heard that before?

Something about that thought triggers an image. The image of those chewed-up girls hanging on the tree. Had that crazy couple said something like what I just thought? Is their mad conversation starting to make sense to me?

A thought sneaks into my head like poisoned gas. If Paige could only eat human flesh and nothing else, what would I do? Would I go so far as to use human bait to lure her, thinking I could help her?

Too horrifying to even think about.

And totally irrelevant.

Because there’s no reason to think Paige had to eat anything. Paige is not a low demon. She’s a little girl. A vegetarian. A born humanitarian. A budding Dalai Lama, for chrissake. She only attacked the angel to defend me. That’s all.

Besides, she didn’t eat him, she just… gnawed on him a little.

The chunks of flesh quiver on the floor. My stomach roils.

Paige watches me with her warm brown eyes fringed with doe-like lashes. I concentrate on that and purposely ignore the blood dripping from her chin and the big, cruel stitches running from her lips to her ears.

Behind her, the angel convulses in earnest. His eyes roll, leaving them pure white, and his head bangs repeatedly on the concrete floor. He is having a seizure. I wonder if he can live with chunks of flesh missing and most of his blood on the floor. His body is probably frantically repairing itself even now. Is there a chance that this monster could recover from this?

I push myself up, trying to ignore the slimy fluids under my hands. My throat burns and I feel stiff and bruised all over.

“Ryn-Ryn.” Paige still has her arms up in a forlorn gesture, but I can't quite bring myself to go hug her. Instead, I lurch over to the angel sword and grab it. I walk back a little more smoothly, getting used to my body again.

I look at the angel's blank eyes, his bleeding mouth. His head trembles, tapping against the floor.

I slam the blade into his heart.

I've never killed anyone before. What frightens me isn't that I'm killing someone. What frightens me is how easy it is.

The blade cuts through him as though he is nothing but a rotten piece of fruit. I feel no sympathetic sensation of a soul or a life essence leaving. There is no guilt or shock or grief at the life that was and the person I have become. There is only the stilling of the trembling flesh and the slow exhalation of his last breath.

“Great Lord in Heaven.”

I look up, startled, at the new voice. It's another angel in a lab coat. I get a quick impression of fresh blood soaking his white coat and gloved hands before two more angels push through the door behind him. Both of the new ones also have blood on their coats and gloves.

I almost don't recognize Laylah with her golden hair pulled back in a tight bun. What is she doing here? Isn’t she supposed to be performing surgery on Raffe?

They all stare at me. I wonder why they would be staring at me rather than at my blood-splattered sister when I realize that I still have my sword stuck into the lab angel. I’m sure they have no trouble recognizing the sword for what it is. There have to be at least a dozen rules against humans having an angel sword.

My brain frantically searches for a way out of this alive. But before any of them can start making accusations, they all look up at the ceiling at the same time. Like the lab angel, they hear something I don't. The nervous looks on their faces don't reassure me.

Then I feel it too. First, a rumbling, then a trembling.

Has it been an hour already?

The angels look toward me again, then turn and bolt toward the double doors that the delivery guy used.

I didn't realize I could feel even more unnerved than I was already.

The Resistance has started their attack.