[Anh Ngữ] Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days) - Susan Ee (English)
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Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 1:
IRONICALLY, SINCE the attacks, the sunsets have been glorious. Outside our condo window, the sky flames like a bruised mango in vivid orange, red, and purple. The clouds ignite with sunset colors, and I’m almost scared those of us caught below will catch on fire too.
With the dying warmth on my face, I try not to think about anything other than keeping my hands from trembling as I methodically zip up my backpack.
I pull on my favorite boots. They used to be my favorites because I once got a compliment from Misty Johnson about the look of the leather strips laddering down the sides. She is—was—a cheerleader and known for her fashionable taste, so I figured these boots were my token fashion statement even though they’re made by a hiking boot company for serious wear. Now they’re my favorites because the strips make for a perfect knife holder.
I also slip sharpened steak knives into Paige’s wheelchair pocket. I hesitate before putting one into Mom’s shopping cart in the living room, but I do it anyway. I slip it in between a stack of Bibles and a pile of empty soda bottles. I shift some clothes over it when she’s not looking, hoping she’ll never have to know it’s there.
Before it gets fully dark, I roll Paige down the common hall to the stairs. She can roll on her own, thanks to her preference for a conventional chair over the electric kind. But I can tell she feels more secure when I push her. The elevator is useless now, of course, unless you’re willing to risk getting stuck when the electricity goes out.
I help Paige out of the chair and carry her on my back while our mother rolls the chair down three flights of stairs. I don’t like the bony feel of my sister. She’s too light now, even for a seven-year-old, and it scares me more than everything else combined.
Once we reach the lobby, I put Paige back into her chair. I sweep a strand of dark hair behind her ear. With her high cheekbones and midnight eyes, we could almost be twins. Her face is more pixie-like than mine, but give her another ten years and she’d look just like me. No one would ever get us mixed up, though, even if we were both seventeen, any more than people would mix up soft and hard, warm and cold. Even now, frightened as she is, the corners of her mouth are tipped up in a ghost of a smile, more concerned for me than herself. I give her one back, trying to radiate confidence.
I run back upstairs to help Mom bring her cart down. We struggle with the ungainly thing, making all kinds of clanking noises as we wobble down the stairs. This is the first time I’m glad no one’s left in the building to hear it. The cart is crammed full of empty bottles, Paige’s baby blankets, stacks of magazines and Bibles, every shirt Dad left in the closet when he moved out, and of course, cartons of her precious rotten eggs. She’s also stuffed every pocket of her sweater and jacket with the eggs.
I consider abandoning the cart, but the fight I’d have with my mother would take much longer and be much louder than helping her. I just hope Paige will be all right for the length of time it takes to bring it down. I could kick myself for not bringing down the cart first so Paige could be in the relatively safer spot upstairs, rather than waiting for us in the lobby.
By the time we reach the front door of the building, I’m already sweating and my nerves are frayed.
“Remember,” I say. “No matter what happens, just keep running down El Camino until you reach Page Mill. Then head for the hills. If we get separated, we’ll meet at the top of the hills, okay?”
If we get separated there’s not much hope of us ever meeting anywhere, but I need to keep up the pretense of hope because that may be all we have.
I put my ear to the front door of our condo building. I hear nothing. No wind, no birds, no cars, no voices. I pull back the heavy door just a crack and peek out.
The streets are deserted except for empty cars parked in every lane. The dying light washes the concrete and steel with graying echoes of color.
The day belongs to the refugees and raid gangs. But at night, they all clear out, leaving the streets deserted by dusk. There’s a strong fear of the supernatural now. Both mortal predators and prey seem to agree on listening to their primal fears and hiding until dawn. Even the worst of the new street gangs leave the night to whatever creatures may roam the darkness in this new world.
At least, they have so far. At some point, the most desperate will start to take advantage of the cover of night despite the risks. I’m hoping we’ll be the first so that we’ll be the only ones out there, if for no other reason than that I won’t have to drag Paige away from helping someone in trouble.
Mom grips my arm as she stares out into the night. Her eyes are intense with fear. She’s cried so much this past year since Dad left that her eyes are now permanently swollen. She has a special terror of the night, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I start to tell her it’ll be all right, but the lie dries up in my mouth. It’s pointless to reassure her.
I take a deep breath, and yank open the door.
With the dying warmth on my face, I try not to think about anything other than keeping my hands from trembling as I methodically zip up my backpack.
I pull on my favorite boots. They used to be my favorites because I once got a compliment from Misty Johnson about the look of the leather strips laddering down the sides. She is—was—a cheerleader and known for her fashionable taste, so I figured these boots were my token fashion statement even though they’re made by a hiking boot company for serious wear. Now they’re my favorites because the strips make for a perfect knife holder.
I also slip sharpened steak knives into Paige’s wheelchair pocket. I hesitate before putting one into Mom’s shopping cart in the living room, but I do it anyway. I slip it in between a stack of Bibles and a pile of empty soda bottles. I shift some clothes over it when she’s not looking, hoping she’ll never have to know it’s there.
Before it gets fully dark, I roll Paige down the common hall to the stairs. She can roll on her own, thanks to her preference for a conventional chair over the electric kind. But I can tell she feels more secure when I push her. The elevator is useless now, of course, unless you’re willing to risk getting stuck when the electricity goes out.
I help Paige out of the chair and carry her on my back while our mother rolls the chair down three flights of stairs. I don’t like the bony feel of my sister. She’s too light now, even for a seven-year-old, and it scares me more than everything else combined.
Once we reach the lobby, I put Paige back into her chair. I sweep a strand of dark hair behind her ear. With her high cheekbones and midnight eyes, we could almost be twins. Her face is more pixie-like than mine, but give her another ten years and she’d look just like me. No one would ever get us mixed up, though, even if we were both seventeen, any more than people would mix up soft and hard, warm and cold. Even now, frightened as she is, the corners of her mouth are tipped up in a ghost of a smile, more concerned for me than herself. I give her one back, trying to radiate confidence.
I run back upstairs to help Mom bring her cart down. We struggle with the ungainly thing, making all kinds of clanking noises as we wobble down the stairs. This is the first time I’m glad no one’s left in the building to hear it. The cart is crammed full of empty bottles, Paige’s baby blankets, stacks of magazines and Bibles, every shirt Dad left in the closet when he moved out, and of course, cartons of her precious rotten eggs. She’s also stuffed every pocket of her sweater and jacket with the eggs.
I consider abandoning the cart, but the fight I’d have with my mother would take much longer and be much louder than helping her. I just hope Paige will be all right for the length of time it takes to bring it down. I could kick myself for not bringing down the cart first so Paige could be in the relatively safer spot upstairs, rather than waiting for us in the lobby.
By the time we reach the front door of the building, I’m already sweating and my nerves are frayed.
“Remember,” I say. “No matter what happens, just keep running down El Camino until you reach Page Mill. Then head for the hills. If we get separated, we’ll meet at the top of the hills, okay?”
If we get separated there’s not much hope of us ever meeting anywhere, but I need to keep up the pretense of hope because that may be all we have.
I put my ear to the front door of our condo building. I hear nothing. No wind, no birds, no cars, no voices. I pull back the heavy door just a crack and peek out.
The streets are deserted except for empty cars parked in every lane. The dying light washes the concrete and steel with graying echoes of color.
The day belongs to the refugees and raid gangs. But at night, they all clear out, leaving the streets deserted by dusk. There’s a strong fear of the supernatural now. Both mortal predators and prey seem to agree on listening to their primal fears and hiding until dawn. Even the worst of the new street gangs leave the night to whatever creatures may roam the darkness in this new world.
At least, they have so far. At some point, the most desperate will start to take advantage of the cover of night despite the risks. I’m hoping we’ll be the first so that we’ll be the only ones out there, if for no other reason than that I won’t have to drag Paige away from helping someone in trouble.
Mom grips my arm as she stares out into the night. Her eyes are intense with fear. She’s cried so much this past year since Dad left that her eyes are now permanently swollen. She has a special terror of the night, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I start to tell her it’ll be all right, but the lie dries up in my mouth. It’s pointless to reassure her.
I take a deep breath, and yank open the door.
Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days)
Author: Susan Ee
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 2:
I INSTANTLY feel exposed. My muscles tighten as if expecting to get shot any moment.
I grab Paige’s chair and wheel her out of the building. I scan the sky, then all around us like a good little rabbit running from predators.
The shadows are quickly darkening over the abandoned buildings, cars, and dying shrubbery that hasn’t been watered in six weeks. Some tag artist has spray-painted an angry angel with enormous wings and a sword on the condo wall across the street. The giant crack that splits the wall zigzags through the angel’s face, making it look demented. Below it, a wannabe poet has scrawled the words, Who will guard against the guardians?
I cringe at the clattering noise my mother’s cart makes as she shoves it over the doorway and onto the sidewalk. We crunch over broken glass, which convinces me even more that we’ve stayed hidden in our condo for longer than we should have. The first floor windows have been broken.
And someone has nailed a feather on the door.
I don’t believe for a second that it’s a real angel feather, although that’s clearly what’s being implied. None of the new gangs are that strong or wealthy. Not yet, anyway.
The feather has been dipped in red paint that drips down the wood. At least, I hope it’s paint. I’ve seen this gang symbol on supermarkets and drug stores in the last few weeks, warning off scavengers. It won’t be long before the gang members come to claim whatever’s left on the higher floors. Too bad for them we won’t be there. For now, they’re still busy claiming territory before the competing gangs get to it first.
We sprint to the nearest car, ducking for cover.
I don’t need to check behind me to make sure Mom is following because the rattling of the cart wheels tells me she’s moving. I take a quick glance up, then in either direction. There’s no motion in the shadows.
Hope flickers through me for the first time since I made our plan. Maybe tonight will be one of those nights where nothing happens on the streets. No gangs, no chewed-up animal remains to be found in the morning, no screams to echo through the night.
My confidence builds as we hop from one car to another, moving faster than I’d expected.
We turn onto El Camino Real, a main artery of Silicon Valley. It means “The Royal Path,” according to my Spanish teacher. The name fits, considering that our local royalty—the founders and early employees of the most cutting edge tech companies in the world—probably got stuck on this road like everyone else.
The intersections are gridlocked with abandoned cars. I’d never seen a gridlock in the valley before six weeks ago. The drivers here were always as polite as can be. But the thing that really convinces me that the apocalypse is here is the crunching of smartphones under my feet. Nothing short of the end of the world would get our eco-conscious techies to toss their latest gadgets onto the street. It’s practically sacrilegious, even if the gadgets are just deadweight now.
I had considered staying on the smaller streets but the gangs are more likely to be hiding where they are less exposed. Even though it’s night, if we tempt them on their own street they might be willing to risk exposing themselves for a cartful of loot. At that distance, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to see that it’s only empty bottles and rags.
I’m about to pop up behind an SUV to scope out our next hop when Paige leans through the gaping car door and reaches for something on the seat.
It’s an energy bar. Unopened.
It is nestled among a scattering of papers as if they’d all fallen out of a bag. The smart thing to do would be for us to grab it and run, then eat it in a safe place. But I’ve learned in the past few weeks that your stomach can pretty easily override your brain.
Paige rips open the package and snaps the bar into thirds. Her face is radiant as she passes the pieces around. Her hand trembles with hunger and excitement. But despite that, she gives us oversized pieces and only keeps the smallest for herself.
I break mine in half and give half of my share to Paige. Mom does the same. Paige looks crestfallen that we’re rejecting her gifts. I put my finger to my lips and give her a stern look. She reluctantly takes the offered food.
Paige has been a vegetarian since she was three years old when we visited the petting zoo. Although she was practically a baby, she still made the connection between the turkey that made her laugh and the sandwiches she ate. We called her our own little Dalai Lama until a couple of weeks ago when I started insisting she eat whatever I manage to scrounge off the street. An energy bar is the best we can do for her these days.
All our faces relax in relief as we bite into the crispy bar. Sugar and chocolate! Calories and vitamins.
One of the pieces of paper flutters down from the passenger seat. I catch a glimpse of the caption.
Rejoice! The Lord is Coming! Join New Dawn and Be the First to Go to Paradise.
It’s one of the fliers from the apocalypse cults that sprang up like pimples on greased skin after the attacks. It has blurry photos of the fiery destruction of Jerusalem, Mecca, and the Vatican. It has a hurried, homemade look to it, like someone took still shots from the news videos and printed them on a cheap color printer..
We gobble up our meal, but I’m too nervous to enjoy the sweet flavor. We are almost at Page Mill Road, which would take us up to the hills through a relatively unpopulated area. I figure once we near the hills, our chances of survival will dramatically increase. It’s full night now, the deserted cars lit eerily by the half moon.
There’s something about the silence that puts my nerves on edge. It seems there should be some noise—maybe the skittering of a rat or birds or crickets or something. Even the wind seems afraid to move.
My mother’s cart sounds especially loud in this silence. I wish I had time to argue with her. A sense of urgency builds in me as if responding to the buildup before lightning. We just need to make it to Page Mill.
I push faster, zigzagging from car to car. Behind me, Mom’s breathing gets heavier and more labored. Paige is so silent, I half suspect she’s holding her breath.
Something white floats gently down and lands on Paige. She picks it up and turns to show me. All the blood drains from her face and her eyes are enormous.
It’s a fluffy piece of down. A snowy feather. The kind that might work its way out of a goose down comforter, only a little larger.
The blood drains out of my face too.
What are the chances?
They mostly target the major cities. Silicon Valley is just a plain strip of low-storied offices and suburbs between San Francisco and San Jose. San Francisco’s already been hit, so if they were going to attack anything in this area, it’d be San Jose, not the valley. It’s just some bird flying by, that’s all. That’s all.
But I’m already panting with panic.
I force myself to look up. All I see is endless dark sky.
But then, I do see something. Another, larger feather floats down lazily toward my head.
Sweat prickles my brow. I break out into an all-out sprint.
Mom’s cart rattles crazily behind me as she desperately follows. She doesn’t need explanations or encouragement to run. I’m scared one of us will fall, or Paige’s chair will tip, but I can’t stop. We have to find a place to hide. Now, now, now.
The hybrid car I was aiming for suddenly crumples under the weight of something crashing down on it. The thunder of the crash almost makes me jump out of my boots. Luckily, it covers Mom’s scream.
I catch a flash of tawny limbs and snowy wings.
An angel.
I have to blink to make sure it’s real.
I’ve never seen an angel before, not live anyway. Of course, we’ve all seen the looping footage of golden-winged Gabriel, Messenger of God, being gunned down from the pile of rubble that was Jerusalem. Or the footage of angels plucking a military helicopter out of the sky and tossing it into the Beijing crowd, blade-first. Or that shaky video of people running from a blazing Paris with the sky filled with smoke and angelic wings.
But watching TV, you could always tell yourself it wasn’t real, even if it was on every news program for days.
There’s no denying that this is the real deal, though. Men with wings. Angels of the Apocalypse. Supernatural beings who’ve pulverized the modern world and killed millions, maybe even billions, of people.
And here’s one of the horrors, right in front of me.
I grab Paige’s chair and wheel her out of the building. I scan the sky, then all around us like a good little rabbit running from predators.
The shadows are quickly darkening over the abandoned buildings, cars, and dying shrubbery that hasn’t been watered in six weeks. Some tag artist has spray-painted an angry angel with enormous wings and a sword on the condo wall across the street. The giant crack that splits the wall zigzags through the angel’s face, making it look demented. Below it, a wannabe poet has scrawled the words, Who will guard against the guardians?
I cringe at the clattering noise my mother’s cart makes as she shoves it over the doorway and onto the sidewalk. We crunch over broken glass, which convinces me even more that we’ve stayed hidden in our condo for longer than we should have. The first floor windows have been broken.
And someone has nailed a feather on the door.
I don’t believe for a second that it’s a real angel feather, although that’s clearly what’s being implied. None of the new gangs are that strong or wealthy. Not yet, anyway.
The feather has been dipped in red paint that drips down the wood. At least, I hope it’s paint. I’ve seen this gang symbol on supermarkets and drug stores in the last few weeks, warning off scavengers. It won’t be long before the gang members come to claim whatever’s left on the higher floors. Too bad for them we won’t be there. For now, they’re still busy claiming territory before the competing gangs get to it first.
We sprint to the nearest car, ducking for cover.
I don’t need to check behind me to make sure Mom is following because the rattling of the cart wheels tells me she’s moving. I take a quick glance up, then in either direction. There’s no motion in the shadows.
Hope flickers through me for the first time since I made our plan. Maybe tonight will be one of those nights where nothing happens on the streets. No gangs, no chewed-up animal remains to be found in the morning, no screams to echo through the night.
My confidence builds as we hop from one car to another, moving faster than I’d expected.
We turn onto El Camino Real, a main artery of Silicon Valley. It means “The Royal Path,” according to my Spanish teacher. The name fits, considering that our local royalty—the founders and early employees of the most cutting edge tech companies in the world—probably got stuck on this road like everyone else.
The intersections are gridlocked with abandoned cars. I’d never seen a gridlock in the valley before six weeks ago. The drivers here were always as polite as can be. But the thing that really convinces me that the apocalypse is here is the crunching of smartphones under my feet. Nothing short of the end of the world would get our eco-conscious techies to toss their latest gadgets onto the street. It’s practically sacrilegious, even if the gadgets are just deadweight now.
I had considered staying on the smaller streets but the gangs are more likely to be hiding where they are less exposed. Even though it’s night, if we tempt them on their own street they might be willing to risk exposing themselves for a cartful of loot. At that distance, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to see that it’s only empty bottles and rags.
I’m about to pop up behind an SUV to scope out our next hop when Paige leans through the gaping car door and reaches for something on the seat.
It’s an energy bar. Unopened.
It is nestled among a scattering of papers as if they’d all fallen out of a bag. The smart thing to do would be for us to grab it and run, then eat it in a safe place. But I’ve learned in the past few weeks that your stomach can pretty easily override your brain.
Paige rips open the package and snaps the bar into thirds. Her face is radiant as she passes the pieces around. Her hand trembles with hunger and excitement. But despite that, she gives us oversized pieces and only keeps the smallest for herself.
I break mine in half and give half of my share to Paige. Mom does the same. Paige looks crestfallen that we’re rejecting her gifts. I put my finger to my lips and give her a stern look. She reluctantly takes the offered food.
Paige has been a vegetarian since she was three years old when we visited the petting zoo. Although she was practically a baby, she still made the connection between the turkey that made her laugh and the sandwiches she ate. We called her our own little Dalai Lama until a couple of weeks ago when I started insisting she eat whatever I manage to scrounge off the street. An energy bar is the best we can do for her these days.
All our faces relax in relief as we bite into the crispy bar. Sugar and chocolate! Calories and vitamins.
One of the pieces of paper flutters down from the passenger seat. I catch a glimpse of the caption.
Rejoice! The Lord is Coming! Join New Dawn and Be the First to Go to Paradise.
It’s one of the fliers from the apocalypse cults that sprang up like pimples on greased skin after the attacks. It has blurry photos of the fiery destruction of Jerusalem, Mecca, and the Vatican. It has a hurried, homemade look to it, like someone took still shots from the news videos and printed them on a cheap color printer..
We gobble up our meal, but I’m too nervous to enjoy the sweet flavor. We are almost at Page Mill Road, which would take us up to the hills through a relatively unpopulated area. I figure once we near the hills, our chances of survival will dramatically increase. It’s full night now, the deserted cars lit eerily by the half moon.
There’s something about the silence that puts my nerves on edge. It seems there should be some noise—maybe the skittering of a rat or birds or crickets or something. Even the wind seems afraid to move.
My mother’s cart sounds especially loud in this silence. I wish I had time to argue with her. A sense of urgency builds in me as if responding to the buildup before lightning. We just need to make it to Page Mill.
I push faster, zigzagging from car to car. Behind me, Mom’s breathing gets heavier and more labored. Paige is so silent, I half suspect she’s holding her breath.
Something white floats gently down and lands on Paige. She picks it up and turns to show me. All the blood drains from her face and her eyes are enormous.
It’s a fluffy piece of down. A snowy feather. The kind that might work its way out of a goose down comforter, only a little larger.
The blood drains out of my face too.
What are the chances?
They mostly target the major cities. Silicon Valley is just a plain strip of low-storied offices and suburbs between San Francisco and San Jose. San Francisco’s already been hit, so if they were going to attack anything in this area, it’d be San Jose, not the valley. It’s just some bird flying by, that’s all. That’s all.
But I’m already panting with panic.
I force myself to look up. All I see is endless dark sky.
But then, I do see something. Another, larger feather floats down lazily toward my head.
Sweat prickles my brow. I break out into an all-out sprint.
Mom’s cart rattles crazily behind me as she desperately follows. She doesn’t need explanations or encouragement to run. I’m scared one of us will fall, or Paige’s chair will tip, but I can’t stop. We have to find a place to hide. Now, now, now.
The hybrid car I was aiming for suddenly crumples under the weight of something crashing down on it. The thunder of the crash almost makes me jump out of my boots. Luckily, it covers Mom’s scream.
I catch a flash of tawny limbs and snowy wings.
An angel.
I have to blink to make sure it’s real.
I’ve never seen an angel before, not live anyway. Of course, we’ve all seen the looping footage of golden-winged Gabriel, Messenger of God, being gunned down from the pile of rubble that was Jerusalem. Or the footage of angels plucking a military helicopter out of the sky and tossing it into the Beijing crowd, blade-first. Or that shaky video of people running from a blazing Paris with the sky filled with smoke and angelic wings.
But watching TV, you could always tell yourself it wasn’t real, even if it was on every news program for days.
There’s no denying that this is the real deal, though. Men with wings. Angels of the Apocalypse. Supernatural beings who’ve pulverized the modern world and killed millions, maybe even billions, of people.
And here’s one of the horrors, right in front of me.
Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 3:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 3:
I ALMOST tip Paige in my rush to spin around and change direction. We skid to a halt behind a parked moving truck. I peek out from behind it, unable to stop watching.
Five more angels swoop down on the one with the snowy wings. Judging by their aggressive stances, it’s a fight of five against one. It’s too dark to see any details on the landing angels but one of them stands out. He’s a giant, towering over the rest. There’s something about the shape of his wings that strikes me as different. Their wings fold too fast when they land for me to take a good look and I’m left wondering if there actually was anything different about that one.
We hunker down and my muscles freeze, refusing to move from the relative safety behind the truck’s tire. So far, they don’t seem to notice us.
A light suddenly flickers and turns on above the crushed hybrid. The electricity has come back on and this street lamp is one of the few that hasn’t yet been broken. The lone pool of light looks over-bright and eerie, highlighting contrasts more than illuminating. A few empty windows light up along the street as well, giving enough light to show me the angels a little better.
They have different colored wings. The one who smashed into the car has snowy white wings. The giant has wings the color of night. The others are blue, green, burnt orange, and tiger-striped.
They’re all shirtless, their muscled forms flexing with every movement. Like their wings, their skin tones vary. The snowy-winged angel that crushed the car has light caramel skin. The night-winged one has skin as pale as an egg. The rest range from gold to dark brown. These angels look like the type to be heavily scarred by battle wounds, but instead they have the kind of perfectly unmarred skin prom queens around the country would kill their prom kings for.
The snowy angel rolls painfully off the crushed car. Despite his injuries, he lands in a half crouch, ready for an attack. His athletic grace reminds me of a puma I once saw on TV.
I can tell he’s a formidable opponent by the way the others warily approach him even though he is injured and far outnumbered. Although the others are muscular, they look brutish and clumsy compared to him. He has the body of an Olympic swimmer, taut and muscled. He looks ready to fight them barehanded even though almost all his enemies are armed with swords.
His sword lies a few feet from the car, where it landed during his fall. Like the other angel swords, it is short with two feet of throat-slitting, double-edged blade.
He sees it and shifts to lunge for it. But Burnt Angel kicks the sword. It spins lazily across the asphalt away from its owner, but the distance it moves is surprisingly short. It must be as heavy as lead. It is still far enough away, though, to ensure that Snowy Wings doesn’t have a prayer of reaching it.
I settle in to watch the angel execution. There’s no question of the outcome. Still, Snow puts up a good fight. He kicks the tiger-striped one and manages to hold his own against two others. But he is no match for all five of them together.
When four of them finally manage to pin him down on the ground, practically sitting on him, Night Giant walks up to him. He stalks like the Angel of Death, which I suppose he could be. I get the distinct impression that this is the culmination of several battles between them. I sense history between them in the way they look at each other, in the way Night yanks at Snow’s wing, spreading it out. He nods at Stripes, who lifts his sword above Snow.
I want to close my eyes against the final blow but I can’t. My eyes stay glued open.
“You should have accepted our invitation when you had the chance,” says Night, straining against the wing to hold it away from Snow’s body. “Although even I wouldn’t have predicted this kind of end for you.”
He nods again to Stripes. The blade whips down and slices off the wing.
Snow shrieks his fury. The street fills with echoes of his rage and agony.
Blood sprays everywhere, showering the others. They struggle to hold him down as the blood makes him slick. Snow twists and kicks two of the bullies with lightning speed. They end up rolling on the asphalt, curling around their stomachs. For a moment, as the remaining two angels fight to keep him down, I think he’ll manage to bust loose.
But Night stomps his boot on Snow’s back, right on the raw wound.
Snow hisses in a breath filled with pain but does not scream. The others take the opportunity to slink back into position, holding him down.
Night drops the severed wing. It lands with the thud of a dead animal on the asphalt.
Snow’s expression is furious. He still has fight in him, but it’s draining fast along with his blood. Blood soaks his skin, mats his hair.
Night grabs the remaining wing and yanks it open.
“If it was up to me, I’d let you go,” says Night. There’s enough admiration in his voice to make me suspect he might mean it. “But we all have our orders.” Despite the admiration, he doesn’t show any regret.
Stripes’s blade, poised on Snow’s wing joint, catches the moon’s reflection.
I cringe, expecting another bloody blow. Behind me, the tiniest sympathetic sound escapes Paige.
Burnt suddenly tilts his head from behind Night. He looks right at us.
I freeze, still crouched behind the moving truck. My heart skips a beat, then races triple time.
Burnt gets up and walks away from the carnage.
Straight toward us.
Five more angels swoop down on the one with the snowy wings. Judging by their aggressive stances, it’s a fight of five against one. It’s too dark to see any details on the landing angels but one of them stands out. He’s a giant, towering over the rest. There’s something about the shape of his wings that strikes me as different. Their wings fold too fast when they land for me to take a good look and I’m left wondering if there actually was anything different about that one.
We hunker down and my muscles freeze, refusing to move from the relative safety behind the truck’s tire. So far, they don’t seem to notice us.
A light suddenly flickers and turns on above the crushed hybrid. The electricity has come back on and this street lamp is one of the few that hasn’t yet been broken. The lone pool of light looks over-bright and eerie, highlighting contrasts more than illuminating. A few empty windows light up along the street as well, giving enough light to show me the angels a little better.
They have different colored wings. The one who smashed into the car has snowy white wings. The giant has wings the color of night. The others are blue, green, burnt orange, and tiger-striped.
They’re all shirtless, their muscled forms flexing with every movement. Like their wings, their skin tones vary. The snowy-winged angel that crushed the car has light caramel skin. The night-winged one has skin as pale as an egg. The rest range from gold to dark brown. These angels look like the type to be heavily scarred by battle wounds, but instead they have the kind of perfectly unmarred skin prom queens around the country would kill their prom kings for.
The snowy angel rolls painfully off the crushed car. Despite his injuries, he lands in a half crouch, ready for an attack. His athletic grace reminds me of a puma I once saw on TV.
I can tell he’s a formidable opponent by the way the others warily approach him even though he is injured and far outnumbered. Although the others are muscular, they look brutish and clumsy compared to him. He has the body of an Olympic swimmer, taut and muscled. He looks ready to fight them barehanded even though almost all his enemies are armed with swords.
His sword lies a few feet from the car, where it landed during his fall. Like the other angel swords, it is short with two feet of throat-slitting, double-edged blade.
He sees it and shifts to lunge for it. But Burnt Angel kicks the sword. It spins lazily across the asphalt away from its owner, but the distance it moves is surprisingly short. It must be as heavy as lead. It is still far enough away, though, to ensure that Snowy Wings doesn’t have a prayer of reaching it.
I settle in to watch the angel execution. There’s no question of the outcome. Still, Snow puts up a good fight. He kicks the tiger-striped one and manages to hold his own against two others. But he is no match for all five of them together.
When four of them finally manage to pin him down on the ground, practically sitting on him, Night Giant walks up to him. He stalks like the Angel of Death, which I suppose he could be. I get the distinct impression that this is the culmination of several battles between them. I sense history between them in the way they look at each other, in the way Night yanks at Snow’s wing, spreading it out. He nods at Stripes, who lifts his sword above Snow.
I want to close my eyes against the final blow but I can’t. My eyes stay glued open.
“You should have accepted our invitation when you had the chance,” says Night, straining against the wing to hold it away from Snow’s body. “Although even I wouldn’t have predicted this kind of end for you.”
He nods again to Stripes. The blade whips down and slices off the wing.
Snow shrieks his fury. The street fills with echoes of his rage and agony.
Blood sprays everywhere, showering the others. They struggle to hold him down as the blood makes him slick. Snow twists and kicks two of the bullies with lightning speed. They end up rolling on the asphalt, curling around their stomachs. For a moment, as the remaining two angels fight to keep him down, I think he’ll manage to bust loose.
But Night stomps his boot on Snow’s back, right on the raw wound.
Snow hisses in a breath filled with pain but does not scream. The others take the opportunity to slink back into position, holding him down.
Night drops the severed wing. It lands with the thud of a dead animal on the asphalt.
Snow’s expression is furious. He still has fight in him, but it’s draining fast along with his blood. Blood soaks his skin, mats his hair.
Night grabs the remaining wing and yanks it open.
“If it was up to me, I’d let you go,” says Night. There’s enough admiration in his voice to make me suspect he might mean it. “But we all have our orders.” Despite the admiration, he doesn’t show any regret.
Stripes’s blade, poised on Snow’s wing joint, catches the moon’s reflection.
I cringe, expecting another bloody blow. Behind me, the tiniest sympathetic sound escapes Paige.
Burnt suddenly tilts his head from behind Night. He looks right at us.
I freeze, still crouched behind the moving truck. My heart skips a beat, then races triple time.
Burnt gets up and walks away from the carnage.
Straight toward us.
Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 4:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 4:
MY BRAIN clamps shut in fear. The only thing I can think to do is to distract the angel while my mother pushes Paige to safety.
“Run!”
My mother’s face freezes wide-eyed in horror. In her panic, she turns and runs off without Paige. She must have assumed I’d push the wheelchair. Paige looks at me with terrified eyes dominating her pixie face.
She swivels her chair and rolls as fast as she can after Mom. My sister can roll her own chair, but not nearly as fast as someone can push her.
None of us will make it out alive without a distraction. With no time to consider the pros and cons, I make a split-second decision.
I sprint out into the open straight toward Burnt.
I dimly register an outraged roar filled with agony somewhere in the background. The second wing is being cut. It’s probably already too late. But I’m at the place where Snow’s sword lies, and there’s not enough time for me to come up with a new plan.
I scoop the sword almost from under Burnt’s feet. I grab it with both hands, expecting it to be very heavy. It lifts in my hands, as light as air. I throw it toward Snow.
“Hey!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
Burnt ducks, looking as surprised as I feel at the sight of the sword flying overhead. It’s a desperate and poorly thought-out move on my part, especially since the angel is probably bleeding to death right now. But the sword flies much truer than I expect and lands hilt-first right in Snow’s outstretched hand, almost as if it was guided there.
Without a pause, the wingless angel swings his sword at Night. Despite his overwhelming injuries, he is fast and furious. I can understand why the others had to dramatically outnumber him before cornering him.
The blade slices through Night’s stomach. His blood gushes out and mixes with the crimson pool already on the road. Stripes leaps to his boss and grabs him before he falls.
Snow, stumbling to regain his balance without his wings, bleeds rivers down his back. He manages to swing his sword again, laying open Stripes’s leg as he runs off with Night in his arms. But that doesn’t stop them.
The two others who’d backed off as soon as things got ugly rush to grab Night and Stripes. They pump their powerful wings while running with the injured, leaving a trail of blood dripping to the ground as they take off into the night.
My distraction is a shocking success. Hope surges in me that maybe my family has found a new hiding place by now.
Then the world explodes in pain as Burnt backhands me.
I fly backward and slam onto the asphalt. My lungs contract so hard I can’t even begin to think about taking a breath. All I can do is curl into a ball, trying to get a sip of air back into my body.
Burnt turns to Snow, who can no longer be called snowy. He hesitates with all his muscles tense, as though considering his odds of winning against the injured angel. Snow, wingless and drenched in blood, sways on his feet, barely able to stand. But his sword is steady and pointed at Burnt. Snow’s eyes burn with fury and determination, which is probably all that’s holding him up.
The bloodied angel must have one hell of a reputation because despite his condition, the perfectly healthy and beefy Burnt slams his sword back into his sheath. He gives me a disgusted glare and takes off. He runs down the street, his wings taking him airborne after half a dozen steps.
The second his enemy turns his back on him, the injured angel collapses to his knees between his severed wings. He looks like he’s bleeding out pretty fast and I’m pretty sure he’ll be road-kill in a few minutes.
I finally manage to suck in a decent breath. It burns as it goes into my lungs, but my muscles unclench as they get oxygen again. I revel in relief. I unwind my body and turn to look down the street.
What I see sends a jolt through me.
Paige is laboriously wheeling herself down the street. Above her, Burnt stops his ascent, circles like a vulture, and begins to swoop down toward her.
I’m up and running like a bullet.
My lungs scream for air but I ignore them.
Burnt looks at me with a smug expression. His wings blow my hair back as I sprint.
So close, so close. Just a little faster. My fault. I pissed him off enough to hurt Paige out of sheer spite. My guilt makes me all the more frantic to save her.
Burnt yells, “Run, monkey! Run!”
Hands reach down and snatch Paige.
“No!” I scream as I reach out to her.
She’s lifted into the air, screaming my name. “Penryn!”
I catch the hem of her pants, my hand gripping the cotton with the yellow starburst sewn onto it by Mom for protection against evil.
Just for a moment, I let myself believe I can pull her back. For a moment, the tightness in my chest begins to relax with anticipated relief.
The fabric slips out of my hand.
“No!” I jump for her feet. My fingertips brush her shoes. “Bring her back! You don’t want her! She’s just a little girl!” My voice breaks at the end.
In no time, the angel is too high to even hear me. I yell at him anyway, chasing them down the street even after Paige’s screams fade into the distance. My heart practically stops at the thought of him dropping her from that height.
Time stretches as I stand panting on the street, watching the speck in the sky shrink to nothing.
“Run!”
My mother’s face freezes wide-eyed in horror. In her panic, she turns and runs off without Paige. She must have assumed I’d push the wheelchair. Paige looks at me with terrified eyes dominating her pixie face.
She swivels her chair and rolls as fast as she can after Mom. My sister can roll her own chair, but not nearly as fast as someone can push her.
None of us will make it out alive without a distraction. With no time to consider the pros and cons, I make a split-second decision.
I sprint out into the open straight toward Burnt.
I dimly register an outraged roar filled with agony somewhere in the background. The second wing is being cut. It’s probably already too late. But I’m at the place where Snow’s sword lies, and there’s not enough time for me to come up with a new plan.
I scoop the sword almost from under Burnt’s feet. I grab it with both hands, expecting it to be very heavy. It lifts in my hands, as light as air. I throw it toward Snow.
“Hey!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
Burnt ducks, looking as surprised as I feel at the sight of the sword flying overhead. It’s a desperate and poorly thought-out move on my part, especially since the angel is probably bleeding to death right now. But the sword flies much truer than I expect and lands hilt-first right in Snow’s outstretched hand, almost as if it was guided there.
Without a pause, the wingless angel swings his sword at Night. Despite his overwhelming injuries, he is fast and furious. I can understand why the others had to dramatically outnumber him before cornering him.
The blade slices through Night’s stomach. His blood gushes out and mixes with the crimson pool already on the road. Stripes leaps to his boss and grabs him before he falls.
Snow, stumbling to regain his balance without his wings, bleeds rivers down his back. He manages to swing his sword again, laying open Stripes’s leg as he runs off with Night in his arms. But that doesn’t stop them.
The two others who’d backed off as soon as things got ugly rush to grab Night and Stripes. They pump their powerful wings while running with the injured, leaving a trail of blood dripping to the ground as they take off into the night.
My distraction is a shocking success. Hope surges in me that maybe my family has found a new hiding place by now.
Then the world explodes in pain as Burnt backhands me.
I fly backward and slam onto the asphalt. My lungs contract so hard I can’t even begin to think about taking a breath. All I can do is curl into a ball, trying to get a sip of air back into my body.
Burnt turns to Snow, who can no longer be called snowy. He hesitates with all his muscles tense, as though considering his odds of winning against the injured angel. Snow, wingless and drenched in blood, sways on his feet, barely able to stand. But his sword is steady and pointed at Burnt. Snow’s eyes burn with fury and determination, which is probably all that’s holding him up.
The bloodied angel must have one hell of a reputation because despite his condition, the perfectly healthy and beefy Burnt slams his sword back into his sheath. He gives me a disgusted glare and takes off. He runs down the street, his wings taking him airborne after half a dozen steps.
The second his enemy turns his back on him, the injured angel collapses to his knees between his severed wings. He looks like he’s bleeding out pretty fast and I’m pretty sure he’ll be road-kill in a few minutes.
I finally manage to suck in a decent breath. It burns as it goes into my lungs, but my muscles unclench as they get oxygen again. I revel in relief. I unwind my body and turn to look down the street.
What I see sends a jolt through me.
Paige is laboriously wheeling herself down the street. Above her, Burnt stops his ascent, circles like a vulture, and begins to swoop down toward her.
I’m up and running like a bullet.
My lungs scream for air but I ignore them.
Burnt looks at me with a smug expression. His wings blow my hair back as I sprint.
So close, so close. Just a little faster. My fault. I pissed him off enough to hurt Paige out of sheer spite. My guilt makes me all the more frantic to save her.
Burnt yells, “Run, monkey! Run!”
Hands reach down and snatch Paige.
“No!” I scream as I reach out to her.
She’s lifted into the air, screaming my name. “Penryn!”
I catch the hem of her pants, my hand gripping the cotton with the yellow starburst sewn onto it by Mom for protection against evil.
Just for a moment, I let myself believe I can pull her back. For a moment, the tightness in my chest begins to relax with anticipated relief.
The fabric slips out of my hand.
“No!” I jump for her feet. My fingertips brush her shoes. “Bring her back! You don’t want her! She’s just a little girl!” My voice breaks at the end.
In no time, the angel is too high to even hear me. I yell at him anyway, chasing them down the street even after Paige’s screams fade into the distance. My heart practically stops at the thought of him dropping her from that height.
Time stretches as I stand panting on the street, watching the speck in the sky shrink to nothing.
Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 5:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 5:
LONG AFTER Paige disappears into the clouds, I turn around, looking for my mother. It’s not that I don’t care about her. It’s just that our relationship is more complicated than the usual daughter-mother relationship. The rosy love I’m supposed to feel for her is slashed with black and splattered with various shades of gray.
There is no sign of her. Her cart lies on its side with its junk contents strewn beside the truck we were hiding behind. I hesitate before yelling out.
“Mom?” Anyone or anything that might have been attracted by noise would already be here, watching in the shadows.
“Mom!”
Nothing stirs in the deserted street. If the silent watchers behind the dark windows lining the street saw where she went, nobody is volunteering to tell me. I try to remember if I had maybe seen another angel grab her, but all I can see is Paige’s dead legs as she is lifted from the chair. Anything could have happened around me at that time, and I would have been oblivious to it.
In a civilized world where there are laws, banks, and supermarkets, being a paranoid schizophrenic is a major problem. But in a world where the banks and supermarkets are used by gangs as local torture stations, being a little paranoid is actually an advantage. The schizophrenic part, though, is still a problem. Not being able to tell reality from fantasy is less than ideal.
Still, there is a good chance that Mom made herself scarce before things got too ugly. She is probably hiding somewhere, most likely tracking my movements until she feels safe enough to come out.
I survey the scene again. I see only buildings with dark windows and dead cars. If I hadn’t spent weeks secretly peering out of one of those dark windows, I might believe I was the last human on the planet. But I know that out there, behind the concrete and steel, there are at least a few pairs of eyes whose owners are considering whether it is worth the risk of running out into the street to scavenge the angel’s wings along with any other part of him they can cut off.
According to Justin, who was our neighbor until a week ago, word on the street is that somebody has put a bounty on angel parts. A whole economy is being created around tearing angels to pieces. The wings fetch the highest price, but hands, feet, scalp, and other, more sensitive parts, can also fetch a nice sum if only you can prove they’re from an angel.
A low groan interrupts my thoughts. My muscles tense instantly, ready for another fight. Are the gangs coming?
Another low moan. The sound is coming not from the buildings, but directly in front of me. The only thing in front of me is the bleeding angel lying on his face.
Could he still be alive?
All the stories I’ve heard say that if you cut off an angel’s wings, he would die. But maybe that is true in the way that if you cut off a person’s arm, he would die. Left unchecked, he would simply bleed to death.
There can’t be that many chances to get yourself a piece of angel. The street might be flooded with scavengers any minute. The smart thing to do would be to get out while I still can.
But if he’s alive, maybe he knows where they took Paige. I trot over, my heart beating furiously with hope.
Blood streams down his back and pools on the asphalt. I flip him over unceremoniously, not even thinking twice about touching him. Even in my frantic state, I notice his ethereal beauty, the smooth rise of his chest. I imagine his face would be classically angelic if not for the bruises and welts.
I shake him. He lies unresponsive, like the Greek god statue he resembles.
I slap him hard. His eyes flutter, and for a moment, they register me. I fight the panicked urge to run.
“Where are they going?”
He moans, his eyelids dropping down. I slap him again, as hard as I can.
“Tell me where they’re going. Where are they taking her?”
A part of me hates the new Penryn I’ve become. Hates the girl who slaps a dying being. But I shove that part deep into a dark corner where it can nag me some other time when Paige is out of danger.
He groans again, and I know he won’t be able to tell me anything if I don’t stop his bleeding and take him to a place where the gangs aren’t likely to swoop down and chop him into little trophies. He is shivering, probably going into deep shock. I flip him over onto his face, this time noticing how light he is.
I run over to my mother’s upended cart. I dig through the pile looking for rags to wrap him with. A first aid kit is hidden at the bottom of the cart. I hesitate only a second before grabbing it. I hate to waste precious first aid supplies on an angel who will die anyway, but he looks so human without his wings that I allow myself to use a few sterile bandages as a layer on his cut.
His back is covered with so much blood and dirt that I can’t actually see how bad the wounds are. I decide it doesn’t matter, so long as I can keep him alive long enough to tell me where they took Paige. I wrap strips of rags around his torso as tightly as I can, trying to put as much pressure on the wounds as possible. I don’t know if you can kill a person by making the bindings too tight, but I do know that bleeding to death is faster than death by almost any other way.
I can feel the pressure of unseen eyes on my back as I work. The gangs would assume that I’m cutting out trophies. They’re probably assessing whether the other angels are likely to come back and whether they have time to run out to wrestle the pieces out of my hands. I have to bundle him up and get him out of here before they grow too bold. In my haste, I knot him up like a rag doll.
I run over and grab Paige’s wheelchair. He is surprisingly light for his size, and it’s far less of a struggle than I’d anticipated to get him into the chair. I suppose it makes sense when you think about it. It’s easier to fly when you weigh fifty pounds rather than five hundred. Knowing he is stronger and lighter than humans doesn’t make me feel any warmer toward him.
I make a show of lifting him and putting him into the chair, grunting and staggering as though he’s terribly heavy. I want the watchers to think the angel is as heavy as he looks, because maybe then they’ll conclude that I’m stronger and tougher than I look in my underfed five foot two frame.
Is that the beginning of an amused grin forming on the angel’s face?
Whatever it is, it turns into a grimace of pain as I dump him into the chair. He is too big to fit comfortably, but it’ll do.
I quickly grab the silken wings to wrap them in a moth-eaten blanket from my mother’s cart. The snowy feathers are wondrously soft, especially compared to the coarse blanket. Even in this panicked moment, I’m tempted to stroke the smooth down. If I pluck the feathers and use them as currency one at a time, a single wing could probably house and feed all three of us for a year. That is, assuming I can get all three of us back together again.
I quickly wrap both wings, not fretting too much about whether the feathers are being broken. I consider leaving one of the wings here on the street to distract the gangs and encourage them to fight amongst each other instead of chasing me. But I need the wings too much if I am to entice the angel into giving me information. I grab the sword, which is amazingly as light as the feathers, and stick it unceremoniously in the seat pocket of the wheelchair.
I take off at a dead run down the street, pushing him as fast as I can into the night.
There is no sign of her. Her cart lies on its side with its junk contents strewn beside the truck we were hiding behind. I hesitate before yelling out.
“Mom?” Anyone or anything that might have been attracted by noise would already be here, watching in the shadows.
“Mom!”
Nothing stirs in the deserted street. If the silent watchers behind the dark windows lining the street saw where she went, nobody is volunteering to tell me. I try to remember if I had maybe seen another angel grab her, but all I can see is Paige’s dead legs as she is lifted from the chair. Anything could have happened around me at that time, and I would have been oblivious to it.
In a civilized world where there are laws, banks, and supermarkets, being a paranoid schizophrenic is a major problem. But in a world where the banks and supermarkets are used by gangs as local torture stations, being a little paranoid is actually an advantage. The schizophrenic part, though, is still a problem. Not being able to tell reality from fantasy is less than ideal.
Still, there is a good chance that Mom made herself scarce before things got too ugly. She is probably hiding somewhere, most likely tracking my movements until she feels safe enough to come out.
I survey the scene again. I see only buildings with dark windows and dead cars. If I hadn’t spent weeks secretly peering out of one of those dark windows, I might believe I was the last human on the planet. But I know that out there, behind the concrete and steel, there are at least a few pairs of eyes whose owners are considering whether it is worth the risk of running out into the street to scavenge the angel’s wings along with any other part of him they can cut off.
According to Justin, who was our neighbor until a week ago, word on the street is that somebody has put a bounty on angel parts. A whole economy is being created around tearing angels to pieces. The wings fetch the highest price, but hands, feet, scalp, and other, more sensitive parts, can also fetch a nice sum if only you can prove they’re from an angel.
A low groan interrupts my thoughts. My muscles tense instantly, ready for another fight. Are the gangs coming?
Another low moan. The sound is coming not from the buildings, but directly in front of me. The only thing in front of me is the bleeding angel lying on his face.
Could he still be alive?
All the stories I’ve heard say that if you cut off an angel’s wings, he would die. But maybe that is true in the way that if you cut off a person’s arm, he would die. Left unchecked, he would simply bleed to death.
There can’t be that many chances to get yourself a piece of angel. The street might be flooded with scavengers any minute. The smart thing to do would be to get out while I still can.
But if he’s alive, maybe he knows where they took Paige. I trot over, my heart beating furiously with hope.
Blood streams down his back and pools on the asphalt. I flip him over unceremoniously, not even thinking twice about touching him. Even in my frantic state, I notice his ethereal beauty, the smooth rise of his chest. I imagine his face would be classically angelic if not for the bruises and welts.
I shake him. He lies unresponsive, like the Greek god statue he resembles.
I slap him hard. His eyes flutter, and for a moment, they register me. I fight the panicked urge to run.
“Where are they going?”
He moans, his eyelids dropping down. I slap him again, as hard as I can.
“Tell me where they’re going. Where are they taking her?”
A part of me hates the new Penryn I’ve become. Hates the girl who slaps a dying being. But I shove that part deep into a dark corner where it can nag me some other time when Paige is out of danger.
He groans again, and I know he won’t be able to tell me anything if I don’t stop his bleeding and take him to a place where the gangs aren’t likely to swoop down and chop him into little trophies. He is shivering, probably going into deep shock. I flip him over onto his face, this time noticing how light he is.
I run over to my mother’s upended cart. I dig through the pile looking for rags to wrap him with. A first aid kit is hidden at the bottom of the cart. I hesitate only a second before grabbing it. I hate to waste precious first aid supplies on an angel who will die anyway, but he looks so human without his wings that I allow myself to use a few sterile bandages as a layer on his cut.
His back is covered with so much blood and dirt that I can’t actually see how bad the wounds are. I decide it doesn’t matter, so long as I can keep him alive long enough to tell me where they took Paige. I wrap strips of rags around his torso as tightly as I can, trying to put as much pressure on the wounds as possible. I don’t know if you can kill a person by making the bindings too tight, but I do know that bleeding to death is faster than death by almost any other way.
I can feel the pressure of unseen eyes on my back as I work. The gangs would assume that I’m cutting out trophies. They’re probably assessing whether the other angels are likely to come back and whether they have time to run out to wrestle the pieces out of my hands. I have to bundle him up and get him out of here before they grow too bold. In my haste, I knot him up like a rag doll.
I run over and grab Paige’s wheelchair. He is surprisingly light for his size, and it’s far less of a struggle than I’d anticipated to get him into the chair. I suppose it makes sense when you think about it. It’s easier to fly when you weigh fifty pounds rather than five hundred. Knowing he is stronger and lighter than humans doesn’t make me feel any warmer toward him.
I make a show of lifting him and putting him into the chair, grunting and staggering as though he’s terribly heavy. I want the watchers to think the angel is as heavy as he looks, because maybe then they’ll conclude that I’m stronger and tougher than I look in my underfed five foot two frame.
Is that the beginning of an amused grin forming on the angel’s face?
Whatever it is, it turns into a grimace of pain as I dump him into the chair. He is too big to fit comfortably, but it’ll do.
I quickly grab the silken wings to wrap them in a moth-eaten blanket from my mother’s cart. The snowy feathers are wondrously soft, especially compared to the coarse blanket. Even in this panicked moment, I’m tempted to stroke the smooth down. If I pluck the feathers and use them as currency one at a time, a single wing could probably house and feed all three of us for a year. That is, assuming I can get all three of us back together again.
I quickly wrap both wings, not fretting too much about whether the feathers are being broken. I consider leaving one of the wings here on the street to distract the gangs and encourage them to fight amongst each other instead of chasing me. But I need the wings too much if I am to entice the angel into giving me information. I grab the sword, which is amazingly as light as the feathers, and stick it unceremoniously in the seat pocket of the wheelchair.
I take off at a dead run down the street, pushing him as fast as I can into the night.
Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 6:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 6:
THE ANGEL is dying.
Lying on the sofa with bandages enveloping his torso, he looks exactly like a human. Beads of sweat cluster around his brows. He is fever-warm to the touch, as though his body is working overtime.
We’re in an office building, one of countless structures housing tech startups in Silicon Valley. The one I picked is in a business park full of identical blocks. My hope is that if someone decides to raid an office building today, he’ll pick one of the others that look just like this one.
To encourage others to pick another building, mine has a dead body in the foyer. He was there when we got here, cold but not yet rotting. At the time, the building still smelled of paper and toner, wood and polish, with only a hint of dead guy. My first instinct was to move on to another place. In fact, I was on my way out when it occurred to me that leaving would be almost everyone’s instinct.
The front doors are glass and you can see the corpse from the outside. Two steps inside the glass doors, the dead man lies faceup with his legs akimbo and his mouth gaping. So I picked this building as home sweet home for a while. It’s been cold enough in here to keep him from smelling too badly, although I expect we’ll have to move soon.
The angel is on the leather couch in what must have been some CEO’s corner office. The walls are decorated with framed black-and-white photos of Yosemite, while the desk and shelves sport photos of a woman and two toddlers in matching outfits.
I picked a single-story building, something low-key and not fancy. It’s a plain building with a company sign that says Zygotronics. The chairs and couches in the lobby are oversized and playful, favoring fuzzy purples and overly bright yellows. There’s a seven-foot blow-up dinosaur by the cubicles. Very retro Silicon Valley. I think I might have enjoyed working in a place like this if I could have graduated from school.
There’s a small kitchen. I just about broke down in tears when I saw the pantry stacked full of snacks and water bottles. Energy bars, nuts, fun-sized chocolates, and even a case of instant noodles, the kind that come in their own cups. Why hadn’t I thought to look in offices before? Probably because I’d never worked in one.
I ignore the refrigerator, knowing there’s nothing in there worth eating. We still have electricity but it’s unreliable and often goes off for days at a time. There must still be frozen meals in the freezer because the smell is not unlike my mother’s rotten eggs. The office building even has its own shower, probably for those overweight executives trying to lose weight at lunchtime. Whatever the reason, it came in handy for rinsing off the blood.
All the comforts of home without, of course, my family who would make it home.
With all the responsibilities and pressures, hardly a day has gone by when I haven’t thought I’d be happier without my family. But it turns out that’s not true. Maybe it would be if I wasn’t so worried about them. I can’t help but think how happy Paige and my mother would have been if we’d found this place together. We could have parked here for a week and pretended that everything was all right.
I feel adrift and clanless, lost and insignificant. I begin to understand what drives the new orphans to join the street gangs.
We have been here two days. Two days in which the angel has neither died nor recovered. He just lies there, sweating. I’m pretty sure he’s dying. If he wasn’t, he would have awakened by now, wouldn’t he?
I find a first aid kit under the sink, but the Band-Aids and most of the other supplies are really meant for nothing worse than paper cuts. I rummage through the first aid box, reading the labels on the little packages. There is a bottle of aspirin. Doesn’t aspirin reduce fevers as well as get rid of a headache? I read the label, and it confirms my suspicions.
I have no idea if aspirin will work on an angel, or if his fever has anything to do with his wounds. For all I know, this could be his regular temperature. Just because he looks human doesn’t mean he is.
I walk back to the corner office with aspirin and a glass of water. The angel lies on his stomach on the black couch. I tried to put a blanket over him that first night, but he just kept kicking it off. So he just has his pants, boots, and bandages wrapped around him. I thought about taking off his pants and boots when I sprayed the blood off him in the shower, but decided that I wasn’t here to make him comfortable.
His black hair is plastered to his forehead. I try to get him to swallow some pills and drink some water but I can’t wake him enough to do anything. He just lies there like a burning piece of rock, totally unresponsive.
“If you don’t drink this water, I’m just going to leave you here to die alone.”
His bandaged back moves up and down serenely, just as it’s been doing for the last two days.
In the meantime, I’ve been out four times looking for Mom. But I haven’t gone far, always afraid the angel would wake while I was gone and I would miss my chance to find Paige before he died on me. Crazy women can sometimes fend for themselves on the streets, while wheelchair-bound little girls never can. So each time, I rushed back from my search for Mom, relieved and frustrated to find the angel still unconscious.
For two days, I’ve been mostly sitting around eating instant noodles while my sister…
I can’t bear to think about what’s happening to her, if for no other reason than my sheer lack of imagination as to what angels would want with a human child. It couldn’t be enslavement. She can’t walk. I shut down those thoughts. I will not think about what may be happening or what may already have happened. I just need to focus on finding her.
The anger and frustration swamp me. All I want to do is throw a tantrum like a two-year-old. I’m overwhelmed by a strong urge to hurl my glass of water at the wall, tear down the bookshelves and scream my head off. The temptation is so strong my hand starts to tremble, and the water in the glass shakes, threatening to spill.
Instead of hurling the glass against the wall, I throw the water on the angel. I want to smash the glass after it, but I hold back.
“Wake up, damn you. Wake up! What are they doing to my sister? What do they want with her? Where the hell is she?” I scream at the top of my lungs, knowing I could be bringing on street gangs and not caring.
I kick the couch for good measure.
To my utter amazement, his eyes open blearily. They’re deep blue and glaring at me. “Can you keep it down? I’m trying to sleep.” His voice is raw and full of pain, but somehow, he still manages to inject a certain level of condescension.
I drop down on my knees to look directly into his face. “Where did the other angels go? Where did they take my sister?”
He deliberately closes his eyes.
I slap his back with everything I’ve got, right where the bandages are bloodied.
His eyes fly open, his teeth gritting. He hisses through his teeth but he doesn’t cry out in pain. Wow, does he look pissed off. I resist the urge to take a step back.
“You don’t scare me,” I say in my coldest voice, trying to tamp down the fear. “You’re too weak to even stand, you’re practically bled out, and without me, you’d already be dead. Tell me where they took her.”
“She’s dead,” he says with absolute finality. Then he closes his eyes as though going back to sleep.
I could swear my heart stops beating for a minute. My fingers feel like they’re freezing. Then my breath comes back to me in a painful heave.
“You’re lying. You’re lying.”
He doesn’t respond. I grab the old blanket that I left on the desk.
“Look at me!” I unroll the blanket onto the floor. The torn wings come tumbling out of it. Rolled up, they compressed to a tiny fraction of their wingspan. The feathers almost seem to have disappeared. As they tumble out of the blanket, the wings partially open, and the fine down lifts as if stretching after a long nap.
I imagine that the horror in his eyes would be exactly like that of a human’s if he saw his own amputated legs rolling out of that moth-eaten blanket. I know I’m being unforgivably cruel, but I don’t have the luxury of being nice, not if I ever want to see Paige alive again.
“Recognize these?” I hardly recognize my own voice. It’s cold and hard. The voice of a mercenary. The voice of a torturer.
The wings have lost their sheen. There is still a hint of golden highlights in the snowy feathers, but some of the feathers are broken and sticking out at odd angles. Also, blood is splattered and congealed all over the wings, making the feathers clump and shrivel.
“If you help me find my sister, you can have these back. I saved them for you.”
“Thanks,” he croaks, surveying the wings. “They’ll look great on my wall.” Bitterness tinges his voice, but something else is also there. A tiny bit of hope, maybe.
“Before you and your buddies destroyed our world, there used to be doctors who could attach a finger or a hand back onto you if it happened to be cut off.” I don’t mention anything about refrigeration or the usual need to reattach a body part within hours of being severed. He’ll probably die anyway and none of this will matter.
The tense muscle in his jaw still stands out on his cold face, but his eyes warm just a fraction, as if he can’t help but think of the possibilities.
“I didn’t cut these off you,” I say. “But I can help you get them back. If you’ll help me find my sister.”
As an answer, he closes his eyes and appears to fall asleep.
He breathes deeply and heavily, just like a person in deep sleep. But he doesn’t heal like a person. When I dragged him in here, his face was black, blue, and swelling. Now, after almost two full days of sleeping, his face is back to normal. The dent from his broken ribs has disappeared. The bruises around his cheeks and eyes are gone, and the numerous cuts and marks on his hands, shoulders, and chest are completely healed.
The only things that haven’t healed are the wounds where his wings used to be. I can’t tell if they’re better through the bandages, but since they’re still bleeding, they’re probably not much better than they were two days ago.
I pause, thinking through my options. If I can’t bribe him, I’ll have to torture it out of him. I’m determined to do what it takes to keep my family alive, but I don’t know if I can go that far.
But he doesn’t have to know that.
Now that he’s awake, I had better make sure I can keep him under control. I head out to see if I can find something to hold him.
Lying on the sofa with bandages enveloping his torso, he looks exactly like a human. Beads of sweat cluster around his brows. He is fever-warm to the touch, as though his body is working overtime.
We’re in an office building, one of countless structures housing tech startups in Silicon Valley. The one I picked is in a business park full of identical blocks. My hope is that if someone decides to raid an office building today, he’ll pick one of the others that look just like this one.
To encourage others to pick another building, mine has a dead body in the foyer. He was there when we got here, cold but not yet rotting. At the time, the building still smelled of paper and toner, wood and polish, with only a hint of dead guy. My first instinct was to move on to another place. In fact, I was on my way out when it occurred to me that leaving would be almost everyone’s instinct.
The front doors are glass and you can see the corpse from the outside. Two steps inside the glass doors, the dead man lies faceup with his legs akimbo and his mouth gaping. So I picked this building as home sweet home for a while. It’s been cold enough in here to keep him from smelling too badly, although I expect we’ll have to move soon.
The angel is on the leather couch in what must have been some CEO’s corner office. The walls are decorated with framed black-and-white photos of Yosemite, while the desk and shelves sport photos of a woman and two toddlers in matching outfits.
I picked a single-story building, something low-key and not fancy. It’s a plain building with a company sign that says Zygotronics. The chairs and couches in the lobby are oversized and playful, favoring fuzzy purples and overly bright yellows. There’s a seven-foot blow-up dinosaur by the cubicles. Very retro Silicon Valley. I think I might have enjoyed working in a place like this if I could have graduated from school.
There’s a small kitchen. I just about broke down in tears when I saw the pantry stacked full of snacks and water bottles. Energy bars, nuts, fun-sized chocolates, and even a case of instant noodles, the kind that come in their own cups. Why hadn’t I thought to look in offices before? Probably because I’d never worked in one.
I ignore the refrigerator, knowing there’s nothing in there worth eating. We still have electricity but it’s unreliable and often goes off for days at a time. There must still be frozen meals in the freezer because the smell is not unlike my mother’s rotten eggs. The office building even has its own shower, probably for those overweight executives trying to lose weight at lunchtime. Whatever the reason, it came in handy for rinsing off the blood.
All the comforts of home without, of course, my family who would make it home.
With all the responsibilities and pressures, hardly a day has gone by when I haven’t thought I’d be happier without my family. But it turns out that’s not true. Maybe it would be if I wasn’t so worried about them. I can’t help but think how happy Paige and my mother would have been if we’d found this place together. We could have parked here for a week and pretended that everything was all right.
I feel adrift and clanless, lost and insignificant. I begin to understand what drives the new orphans to join the street gangs.
We have been here two days. Two days in which the angel has neither died nor recovered. He just lies there, sweating. I’m pretty sure he’s dying. If he wasn’t, he would have awakened by now, wouldn’t he?
I find a first aid kit under the sink, but the Band-Aids and most of the other supplies are really meant for nothing worse than paper cuts. I rummage through the first aid box, reading the labels on the little packages. There is a bottle of aspirin. Doesn’t aspirin reduce fevers as well as get rid of a headache? I read the label, and it confirms my suspicions.
I have no idea if aspirin will work on an angel, or if his fever has anything to do with his wounds. For all I know, this could be his regular temperature. Just because he looks human doesn’t mean he is.
I walk back to the corner office with aspirin and a glass of water. The angel lies on his stomach on the black couch. I tried to put a blanket over him that first night, but he just kept kicking it off. So he just has his pants, boots, and bandages wrapped around him. I thought about taking off his pants and boots when I sprayed the blood off him in the shower, but decided that I wasn’t here to make him comfortable.
His black hair is plastered to his forehead. I try to get him to swallow some pills and drink some water but I can’t wake him enough to do anything. He just lies there like a burning piece of rock, totally unresponsive.
“If you don’t drink this water, I’m just going to leave you here to die alone.”
His bandaged back moves up and down serenely, just as it’s been doing for the last two days.
In the meantime, I’ve been out four times looking for Mom. But I haven’t gone far, always afraid the angel would wake while I was gone and I would miss my chance to find Paige before he died on me. Crazy women can sometimes fend for themselves on the streets, while wheelchair-bound little girls never can. So each time, I rushed back from my search for Mom, relieved and frustrated to find the angel still unconscious.
For two days, I’ve been mostly sitting around eating instant noodles while my sister…
I can’t bear to think about what’s happening to her, if for no other reason than my sheer lack of imagination as to what angels would want with a human child. It couldn’t be enslavement. She can’t walk. I shut down those thoughts. I will not think about what may be happening or what may already have happened. I just need to focus on finding her.
The anger and frustration swamp me. All I want to do is throw a tantrum like a two-year-old. I’m overwhelmed by a strong urge to hurl my glass of water at the wall, tear down the bookshelves and scream my head off. The temptation is so strong my hand starts to tremble, and the water in the glass shakes, threatening to spill.
Instead of hurling the glass against the wall, I throw the water on the angel. I want to smash the glass after it, but I hold back.
“Wake up, damn you. Wake up! What are they doing to my sister? What do they want with her? Where the hell is she?” I scream at the top of my lungs, knowing I could be bringing on street gangs and not caring.
I kick the couch for good measure.
To my utter amazement, his eyes open blearily. They’re deep blue and glaring at me. “Can you keep it down? I’m trying to sleep.” His voice is raw and full of pain, but somehow, he still manages to inject a certain level of condescension.
I drop down on my knees to look directly into his face. “Where did the other angels go? Where did they take my sister?”
He deliberately closes his eyes.
I slap his back with everything I’ve got, right where the bandages are bloodied.
His eyes fly open, his teeth gritting. He hisses through his teeth but he doesn’t cry out in pain. Wow, does he look pissed off. I resist the urge to take a step back.
“You don’t scare me,” I say in my coldest voice, trying to tamp down the fear. “You’re too weak to even stand, you’re practically bled out, and without me, you’d already be dead. Tell me where they took her.”
“She’s dead,” he says with absolute finality. Then he closes his eyes as though going back to sleep.
I could swear my heart stops beating for a minute. My fingers feel like they’re freezing. Then my breath comes back to me in a painful heave.
“You’re lying. You’re lying.”
He doesn’t respond. I grab the old blanket that I left on the desk.
“Look at me!” I unroll the blanket onto the floor. The torn wings come tumbling out of it. Rolled up, they compressed to a tiny fraction of their wingspan. The feathers almost seem to have disappeared. As they tumble out of the blanket, the wings partially open, and the fine down lifts as if stretching after a long nap.
I imagine that the horror in his eyes would be exactly like that of a human’s if he saw his own amputated legs rolling out of that moth-eaten blanket. I know I’m being unforgivably cruel, but I don’t have the luxury of being nice, not if I ever want to see Paige alive again.
“Recognize these?” I hardly recognize my own voice. It’s cold and hard. The voice of a mercenary. The voice of a torturer.
The wings have lost their sheen. There is still a hint of golden highlights in the snowy feathers, but some of the feathers are broken and sticking out at odd angles. Also, blood is splattered and congealed all over the wings, making the feathers clump and shrivel.
“If you help me find my sister, you can have these back. I saved them for you.”
“Thanks,” he croaks, surveying the wings. “They’ll look great on my wall.” Bitterness tinges his voice, but something else is also there. A tiny bit of hope, maybe.
“Before you and your buddies destroyed our world, there used to be doctors who could attach a finger or a hand back onto you if it happened to be cut off.” I don’t mention anything about refrigeration or the usual need to reattach a body part within hours of being severed. He’ll probably die anyway and none of this will matter.
The tense muscle in his jaw still stands out on his cold face, but his eyes warm just a fraction, as if he can’t help but think of the possibilities.
“I didn’t cut these off you,” I say. “But I can help you get them back. If you’ll help me find my sister.”
As an answer, he closes his eyes and appears to fall asleep.
He breathes deeply and heavily, just like a person in deep sleep. But he doesn’t heal like a person. When I dragged him in here, his face was black, blue, and swelling. Now, after almost two full days of sleeping, his face is back to normal. The dent from his broken ribs has disappeared. The bruises around his cheeks and eyes are gone, and the numerous cuts and marks on his hands, shoulders, and chest are completely healed.
The only things that haven’t healed are the wounds where his wings used to be. I can’t tell if they’re better through the bandages, but since they’re still bleeding, they’re probably not much better than they were two days ago.
I pause, thinking through my options. If I can’t bribe him, I’ll have to torture it out of him. I’m determined to do what it takes to keep my family alive, but I don’t know if I can go that far.
But he doesn’t have to know that.
Now that he’s awake, I had better make sure I can keep him under control. I head out to see if I can find something to hold him.
Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 7:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 7:
WHEN I walk out of the corner office, I find that the dead man in the foyer has been messed with. He seems to have lost all dignity since the last time I saw him.
Someone has arranged for one hand to be propped on his hip while the other hand reaches up to his hair. His long, shaggy hair has been spiked as though electrocuted, and his mouth is smeared drunkenly with lipstick. His eyes are wide open with black felt lines radiating like sun rays from his sockets. In the middle of his chest, a kitchen knife that wasn’t there an hour ago sticks out like a flagpole. Someone stabbed a dead body for reasons only the insane can fathom.
My mother has found me.
My mother’s condition is not as consistent as some might think. The intensity of her insanity waxes and wanes with no predictable schedule or trigger. Of course, it doesn’t help that she’s off her meds. When it’s good, people might not guess there’s anything wrong with her. Those are the days when the guilt of my anger and frustration toward her eats away at me. When it’s bad, I might walk out of my room to find a dead-man-turned-toy on the floor.
To be fair, she has never played with corpses before, at least, not that I’ve seen. Before the world fell apart, she’d always been on the edge and often several steps beyond it. But my dad’s desertion, then later the attacks, intensified everything. Whatever rational part that had been holding her back from diving into the darkness simply dissolved.
I think about burying the body, but a cold part of my mind tells me that this is still the best deterrent I could have. Any sane person who looks through the glass doors would run far, far away. We now play a permanent game of I-am-crazier-and-scarier-than-you. And in that game, my mother is our secret weapon.
I walk cautiously toward the bathrooms where the shower is running. Mom hums a haunting melody, one that I think she made up. She used to sing it to us when she was in her half-lucid state. A wordless tune that is both sad and nostalgic. It may have had words to it at one point because every time I hear it, it evokes a sunset over the ocean, an ancient castle, and a beautiful princess who throws herself off the castle walls into the pounding surf below.
I stand outside the bathroom door, listening to her. I associate this song with her coming back from a particularly crazy phase. Usually, she hummed it to us as she patched up whatever bruises or slashes she had caused.
She was always gentle and genuinely sorry during these times. I think it might have been an apology of a sort. Never enough, obviously, but it may have been her way of reaching back to the light, of letting us know that she was surfacing out of the darkness and into the gray zone.
She hummed it incessantly after Paige’s “accident.” We never did find out exactly what happened. Only Mom and Paige were in the house at the time, and only they will ever know the real story. My mother cried for months after, blaming herself. I blamed her too. How could I not?
“Mom?” I call out through the closed bathroom door.
“Penryn!” she calls out over the shower splashes.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Are you? Have you seen Paige? I can’t find her anywhere.”
“We’ll find her, okay? How did you find me?”
“Oh, I just did.” My mother doesn’t usually lie, but she does have a habit of being vaguely evasive.
“How did you find me, Mom?”
The shower runs freely for a while before she answers. “A demon told me.” Her voice is full of reluctance, full of shame. The world being what it is these days, I might even consider believing her, except that no one but her sees or hears her personal demons.
“That was nice of him,” I say. The demons usually took the blame for the crazy, bad things my mother did. They rarely got credit for anything good.
“I had to promise I’d do something for him.” An honest answer. And a warning.
My mother is stronger than she looks, and when given the upper hand of surprise, she can do serious harm. She’s been contemplating defense all her life—how to sneak up on an attacker, how to hide from The Thing That Watches, how to banish the monster back to Hell before it steals the souls of her children.
I consider the possibilities as I lean against the bathroom door. Whatever it is she’s promised her demon is guaranteed to be unpleasant. And quite possibly painful. The only question is who the pain will be inflicted upon.
“I’m just going to collect some stuff and hole up in the corner office,” I say. “I might be in there a day or two, but don’t worry, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want you coming into the office. But don’t leave the building, okay? There’s water and food in the kitchen.” I think about telling her to be careful, but of course, that’s ridiculous. For decades, she has been careful about people and monsters trying to kill her. Since the attacks, she’s finally found them.
“Penryn?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure you wear the stars.” She’s referring to the yellow asterisks she’s sewn on our clothes. How I can not wear them is beyond me. They’re on everything we own.
“Okay, Mom.”
Despite her star comment, she sounds lucid. Maybe that’s not the healthiest thing after desecrating a corpse.
I’M NOT as helpless as the average teen.
When Paige was two years old, my father and I came home to find her broken and crippled. My mother stood over her in deep shock. We never did find out exactly what happened or how long she stood frozen over Paige. My mother cried and pulled almost all her hair out without saying a word for weeks.
When she finally came out of it, the first thing she said was that I needed to take self-defense lessons. She wanted me to learn to fight. She simply took me to a martial arts studio and prepaid in cash for five years’ worth of training.
She talked with the sensei and found out that there were different kinds of martial arts—tae kwon do for fighting when you have a little distance, jujitsu for up close and personal, and escrima for knife fighting. She drove all over town signing me up for all of them and then some. Shooting lessons, archery lessons, survivalist workshops, Sikh camps, women’s self-defense, anything she could think of, everything she could find.
When my father found out about it a few days later, she had already spent thousands of dollars we didn’t have. My dad, already gray with worry about hospital bills for poor Paige, lost all color in his face when he learned what she had done.
After that rush of manic activity, she seemed to forget about ever having signed me up. The only time she asked me about it was a couple of years later when I found her collection of newspaper articles. I’d seen her cut them out now and then but never wondered what they were. She saved them in an old-fashioned photo album, a pink one that said Baby’s First Album. One day, it was out on the table, open and inviting me to glance at it.
The bold title of the article carefully pasted on the open page read, “Killer Mom Says the Devil Made Me Do It.”
I flipped to the next page. “Mother Throws Toddlers into Bay and Watches Them Drown.”
Then the next. “Child Skeletons Found in Woman’s Yard.”
In one of the news stories, a six-year-old kid was found two feet from the front door. His mother had stabbed him over a dozen times before she went upstairs to do the same to his little sister.
The story quoted a relative who said that the mother had tried desperately to drop off the kids at her sister’s place only a few hours before the massacre, but the sister had to go to work and couldn’t take the kids. The relative said it was as though the mother was afraid of what might happen, as if she felt the darkness coming. He described how after the mother snapped out of it and realized what she had done, she nearly tore herself to pieces with her horror and anguish.
All I could think about was what it must have been like for that kid who tried so hard to make it out of the house to get help.
I don’t know how long my mother stood there watching me looking through the articles before asking, “Are you still taking your self-defense classes?”
I nodded.
She didn’t say anything. She just walked past with wooden boards and books stacked in her arms.
I found them later on the lid of the toilet seat. For two weeks, she insisted we keep them there to keep the demons from coming up through the pipes. Easier to sleep, she said, when the devil wasn’t whispering to her all night.
I never missed a single training session.
Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 8:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 8:
IN THE office kitchen, I collect instant noodles, energy bars, duct tape, and half the candy bars. I put the bag into the corner office. The noise doesn’t bother the angel, who seems to be enjoying the sleep of the dead again.
I go back to the kitchen just as the sound of the shower stops. I run several bottles of water to the office as fast as I can. Despite being relieved that she has found me, I don’t want to see my mom. It’s good enough that she’s safe and in the building. I need to focus on finding Paige. I can’t do that very well if I’m constantly worried about what my mother is up to.
Trying not to look at the corpse in the foyer, I remind myself that Mom can take care of herself. I slip into the corner office, close the door, and bolt it with the door lock. Whoever had this office must have enjoyed his privacy. It works for me.
I felt safe from the angel when he was unconscious, but now that he’s awake, him being wounded and weak is not enough to guarantee my safety. I don’t actually know how strong angels are. Like everyone else, I know close to nothing about them.
I duct tape his wrists and ankles together behind his back so that he’s hog-tied in the most uncomfortable-looking position. It’s the best I can do. I consider using twine to reinforce the duct tape, but the tape is strong and I figure if he can get past that, the twine isn’t really going to add much to it. I’m pretty sure he barely has enough energy to lift his head, but you never know. In my nervousness, I use almost the entire roll of tape.
It’s not until I’m done and looking at him that I notice that he is looking back at me. All that hog-tying must have woken him up. His eyes are so blue they’re almost black. I take a step back and swallow the absurd guilt that surfaces. I feel like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t be doing. But there’s no question the angels are our enemies. No question that they’re my enemies, so long as they have Paige.
He looks at me with accusation in his eyes. I swallow an apology because I don’t owe him one. While he watches, I unfurl one of his wings. I pick up scissors from the desk drawer and bring them close to the feathers.
“Where did they take my sister?”
The briefest emotion flickers in his eyes, gone so fast that I can’t identify it. “How the hell should I know?”
“Because you’re one of the stinking bastards.”
“Ooh. You cut me to the bone with that one.” He sounds bored, and I’m almost embarrassed by my lack of a stronger insult. “Didn’t you notice I wasn’t exactly chummy with the other fellas?”
“They’re not ‘fellas.’ They’re not anywhere near human. They’re nothing but leaking sacks of mutated maggots, just like you.” Looks-wise, he and the other angels I’d seen were closer to living Adonises, complete with godlike faces and presences. But inside, they were maggots for sure.
“Leaking sacks of mutated maggots?” He raises his perfectly arched eyebrow as though I’ve just failed my verbal insult exam.
In response, I cut through several feathers of his wing with a cruel snap of my scissors. Snowy down floats gently onto my boots. Instead of satisfaction, I feel a wave of uneasiness at the expression on his face. His fierce glare reminds me that he had been outnumbered five to one by his enemies, and he had nearly won. Even hog-tied and wingless, he sure could give an intimidating look.
“Try doing that again and I’ll snap you in half before you know it.”
“Big words from a guy who’s trussed up like a turkey. What are you going to do, wobble over here like an upside-down turtle to snap me in half?”
“The logistics of breaking you are easy. The only question is when.”
“Right. If you could do it, you would have done it already.”
“Maybe you entertain me,” he says with supreme confidence, as if he’s in control of the situation. “Like a monkey with an attitude and a pair of scissors.” He relaxes and rests his chin on the couch.
A flush of anger heats my cheeks. “You think this is a game? You think you wouldn’t be dead already if it wasn’t for my sister?” I practically yell this last part. I viciously chop through more of the feathers. The once exquisite perfection of the wing is now tattered and jagged at the edges.
His head pops back up from the couch, the tendons on his neck straining so hard that I wonder just how weak he really is. The muscles in his arms flex, and I start worrying about the strength of the bindings around his limbs.
“Penryn?” My mother’s voice floats through the door. “Are you all right?”
I look to make sure the door is locked.
When I look back at the couch, the angel is gone, with only shreds of duct tape where he should be.
I feel a breath on my neck as the scissors are snatched out of my hand.
“I’m fine, Mom,” I say with a surprising degree of calm. Having her nearby will only endanger her. Telling her to run will probably make her freak in panic. The only sure thing is that her response will be unpredictable.
A well-muscled arm slides around my throat from behind and begins to squeeze.
Grabbing his arm around my neck, I tuck my chin down hard, trying to transfer the pressure of his arm onto my chin rather than my throat. I have about twenty seconds to get out of this before either my brain shuts off or my windpipe collapses.
I crouch as low as I can. Then I spring backward, slamming us both into the wall. The impact is harder than if he’d weighed as much as a normal man.
I hear an “Oof” and the clattering of photo frames, and I know those gashes on his back must be screaming from the sharp frame edges.
“What’s that noise?” my mother demands.
The arm squeezes viciously around my throat, and I decide the term “angel of mercy” is an oxymoron. Not wasting my energy on fighting the choke, I gather myself for another slam into the wall. The least I can do is cause a lot of pain while he takes me out.
This time, his groan is sharper. I would get a lot of satisfaction out of that, except that my head is feeling light and spotty.
One more slam and dark spots bloom all over my vision.
Just as I realize my vision is going out, he loosens his grip. I fall to my knees, gasping for air through my raw throat. My head feels too heavy on my neck, and it’s all I can do to not fall flat on the floor.
“Penryn Young, you open this door right now!” The doorknob jiggles. My mother must have been calling out all this time, but it hadn’t really registered.
The angel groans like he’s in real pain. He crawls past me and I see why. His back bleeds through the bandages in spots that look like puncture wounds. I glance behind me at the wall. Two oversized nails that used to hold up the framed Yosemite poster stick out from the wall, their heads dripping with blood.
The angel is not the only one in bad shape. I can’t seem to take a breath without doubling over in a coughing fit.
“Penryn? Are you okay?” My mom sounds worried. What she imagines is happening in here, I can’t begin to guess.
“Yeah,” I croak. “It’s okay.”
The angel crawls onto the couch and lies on his stomach with another groan. I flash him an evil grin.
“You,” he says with a dirty look, “don’t deserve salvation.”
“As if you could give it to me,” I croak. “Why would I want to go to Heaven anyway when it’s crammed full of murderers and kidnappers like you and your buddies?”
“Who says I belong in Heaven?” It’s true that the nasty snarl he’s giving me belongs more to a hellion than to a heavenly being. He mars the fiendish image with a wince of pain.
“Penryn? Who are you talking to?” My mother sounds almost frantic now.
“Just my own personal demon, Mom. Don’t worry. He’s just a little weakling.”
Weak or not, we both know he could have killed me if that’s what he wanted. I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing I was scared, though.
“Oh.” She sounds calm suddenly, as if that explained everything. “Okay. Don’t underestimate them. And don’t make them promises you can’t keep.” I can tell by her fading voice as she says this that she’s reassured and walking away.
The baffled look the angel shoots at the door makes me chuckle. He glances my way, giving me a you’re-weirder-than-your-mom look.
“Here.” I toss him a roll of bandages from my stash. “You probably want to put pressure on that.”
He catches it neatly even as he closes his eyes. “How am I supposed to reach my back?”
“Not my problem.”
He relaxes his hand with a sigh, and the bandage rolls onto the floor, leaving a ribbon on the carpet.
“You’re not sleeping again, are you?”
His only response is a muffled, “Mmm,” as his breathing turns heavy and regular like a man in deep sleep.
Damn.
I stand there, watching him. This is obviously some kind of healing sleep by the look of his previously repaired injuries. If he wasn’t so gravely injured and exhausted, there’s no doubt he would have kicked my ass to kingdom come and back, even if he chose not to kill me. But it still irks me that he sees me as such a small threat as to actually fall asleep in my presence.
Duct tape was a bad idea that only made sense when I thought he was weak as wet paper. Now that I know better, what are my options?
I dig around the office kitchen drawers and supply room and come up with nothing. It’s not until I go through someone’s gym bag under a desk that I find an old-fashioned bike lock, the kind with heavy chains wrapped in plastic, with a key in the lock. There’s something to be said for an old-school chaining.
There’s nothing in the office to chain him to, so I use a metal cart sitting next to the copier. I sweep the stacks of paper off it and roll it into the corner office. My mother is nowhere to be seen, and I can only assume she is giving me the professional courtesy of letting me deal with my “personal demon” in private.
I roll the cart next to the sleeping man—angel, I mean angel. Careful not to wake him, I loop the chain tightly around each of his wrists, then wrap it several times around one of the metal legs of the cart so that it takes up all the slack. Then I snap the lock shut with a satisfying click.
The chain can slide up and down the cart leg but can’t escape it. This is an even better idea than I first realized because I can now move him around without him being able to run off. Wherever he’s going, the cart will go with him.
I roll up his wings in the blanket and stow them away in one of the large metal filing cabinets beside the kitchen. I almost feel like a grave robber as I pull the files out of the drawer and stack them on top of the cabinet. I run my fingers along the stack. Each of these files used to mean something. A home, a patent, a business. Someone’s dream left to collect dust in an abandoned office.
As an afterthought, I drop the key to the chain lock in the drawer where I stored the angel sword on the first night.
I trot back through the lobby and slip into the corner office. The angel is still asleep or comatose, I’m not sure which. I lock the door and curl up on the executive chair.
His beautiful face blurs as my eyelids get heavier. I haven’t slept in two days, afraid to miss the one chance I might have if the angel woke, only to die on me. Asleep, he looks like a bleeding Prince Charming chained in the dungeon. When I was little, I always thought I’d be Cinderella, but I guess this makes me the wicked witch.
But then again, Cinderella didn’t live in a post-apocalyptic world invaded by avenging angels.
I KNOW something is wrong before I wake. In the twilight between waking and sleeping, I hear glass breaking. I’m wired and alert before the sound fades.
A hand clamps onto my mouth.
The angel shushes me with a whisper lighter than air. The first thing I see in the dim moonlight is the metal cart. He must have jumped off the couch and rolled it over here in the split second it took for the glass to break.
It dawns on me that if, for the moment, the angel and I are on the same side, then someone else is a threat to us both.
Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days)
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 9:
Author: Susan Ee
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Chap 9:
BELOW THE door, light plays back and forth in the semidarkness.
The fluorescent lights were on when I fell asleep but now it’s dark with only the moonlight streaming in through the windows. The light moving in the crack beneath the door looks like a flashlight jerking back and forth. Either an intruder came in with flashlights, or my mother turned one on when the lights went off. A sure sign of habitation.
It’s not that she’s unaware of the risks. She’s far from stupid. It’s just that her brand of paranoia makes her fear supernatural predators more than natural ones. So sometimes, lighting the dark to ward off evil is more important to her than avoiding detection by mere mortals. Lucky me.
Even chained and pulling a metal cart, the angel moves like a cat to the door.
Dark stains seep through his white bandages like Rorschach patterns on his back. He may be strong enough to break a roll of duct tape, but he is still wounded and bleeding. Just how strong is he? Strong enough to fight off half a dozen street thugs desperate enough to roam at night?
I suddenly wish I hadn’t chained him. It’s a good
that whoever the intruder is, he’s not alone, not at night.“Hell-ooo,” a man’s voice calls out playfully through the dark. “Anybody home?”
The lobby is carpeted, and I can’t tell how many of them there are until things start to crash from different directions. It sounds like there are at least three of them.
Where’s Mom? Did she have time to run and hide?
I gauge the window. It won’t be easy to break, but if the gang members could do it, I should be able to. It is certainly large enough for me to hop through. Thank whatever goodness is left in the world that we’re on the ground floor.
I push at the glass, testing the sturdiness of it. It would take time to break this. Plus, the noise would echo throughout the building as I bang repeatedly on the window.
Outside, the gang calls to each other. They hoot and holler, smash and crash. They’re performing for us, making sure we’re good and scared by the time they find us. By the sound of things, there are at least six of them now.
I glance again at the angel. He’s listening, probably figuring out his odds. Being wounded and chained to a metal cart, his chance of outrunning a street gang is about zero.
On the other hand, if the gang is drawn by the noise of the window breaking, they would be fully occupied as soon as they saw the angel. The angel is like the proverbial gold mine and they the lucky miners. Mom and I could get away during the chaos. But then what? The angel can’t tell me where to find Paige if he’s dead.
Maybe the gang will just break a few things, raid the food in the kitchen, and leave.
A woman’s scream pierces the night.
My mother.
Men’s voices shout and tease. They sound entertained, the way a pack of dogs might sound if they’d cornered a cat.
I grab a chair and smash it against the window. It makes a huge bang and flexes, but doesn’t break. I want to make as much of a distraction as I can, hoping the noise will make them forget about my mother. I bang it again. And again. Frantically trying to break the window.
She screams again. Shouts come my way.
The angel grabs his cart and hurls it at the window. Glass explodes in every direction. I cringe but a distant part of my mind is aware that the angel has shifted, using his body to block the shards from hitting me.
Something thumps hard against the locked door of our office. The door rattles but the locks hold.
I grab the cart and pull it up to the windowsill, trying to help the angel get out.
The door crashes open, bouncing off the wall with broken hinges.
The angel spares me a quick, hard glance and says, “Run.”
I vault out the window.
I land running. I dash around the building, looking for the back entrance or a broken window to jump through. My mind is crowded with what might be happening to my mother, to the angel, to Paige. I have an almost irresistible urge to hide under a bush and curl up in a ball. To shut off my eyes, ears, and brain, and just lie there until nothing exists anymore.
I shove the horrible, screaming images in my head into the dark, silent place in my mind that is getting deeper and more crowded each day. One day soon, the things I stuff in there will burst out and infect the rest of me. Maybe that will be the day the daughter becomes like the mother. Until then, I am still in control.
I don’t have to go far to find a broken window. Considering how many times I banged at my window and still failed to break it, I hate to think about how amped up the guy who broke this one must be. That doesn’t make me feel any better about sneaking back into the building.
I run from office to office, cubicle to cubicle, whisper-shouting for my mother.
I find a man lying in the hallway leading to the kitchen. His chest is bare, his shirt torn away. Six butter knives stick out of his flesh in a circular pattern. Someone has drawn a powder-pink lipstick pentagram with the knives at the end of the points. Blood bubbles up from each of the knives. The man is all eyes and shock as he stares at the ruin of his chest as though unable to believe it has anything to do with him.
My mother is safe.
Seeing what she did to this man, I can’t help but wonder if that’s a good thing. She has purposely missed his heart, and he will slowly bleed to death.
If we had been back in the old world, in the World Before, I would have called an ambulance despite the fact that he had attacked my mom. The doctors would have fixed him up, and he would have had all the time he needed to recover in jail. But unfortunately for all of us, this is the World After.
I step around him and leave him to his slow death.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a woman-shaped shadow slipping out through a side door. She stops before the door closes and looks back at me. My mother frantically waves her hand at me to come with her. I should join her. I take two steps in her direction, but I can’t ignore the grunting and crashing of the colossal fight at the far end of the building.
The angel is surrounded by a gang of scruffy but deadly looking men.
There must be at least ten of them. Three are strewn about at odd angles beyond the circle of the fight, unconscious or dead. Two more are taking a beating from the angel as he swings the cart like a giant mace. But even from here, even in the thin moonlight streaming in through the glass doors, I can see the crimson stains seeping through his bandages. That cart must weigh a hundred pounds. He is visibly exhausted and the others are moving in for the kill.
I’ve sparred with multiple opponents in the dojo, and last summer, I was one of the assistant instructors of an advanced self-defense course entitled “Multiple Assailants.” Still, I’ve never fought more than three at a time. And none of my opponents have ever wanted to actually kill me. I’m not stupid enough to think that I can take on seven desperate guys with the help of a crippled angel. My heart tries to gallop out of my chest just thinking about it.
My mother waves at me again, beckoning me toward freedom.
Something smashes on the far side of the lobby and a grunt of pain follows it. With every hit to the angel, I feel Paige slipping away from me.
I wave my mother away, mouthing the word go.
She beckons me once more, more frantic this time.
I shake my head and wave her away.
She slips into the darkness and disappears behind the closing door.
I bolt over to the filing cabinet beside the kitchen. I quickly think through the pros and cons of using the angel sword and decide against it. I might slice up one person with it, but without training, I’m sure it would be taken away from me in no time.
So instead, I grab the wings and the key to the angel’s chain. I stuff the key in my jeans pocket and quickly unwrap the wings. My only hope is that the gang’s fear and desire for self-preservation will be on my side. Before my brain can kick in and tell me what a harebrained, dangerous idea this is, I rush over to the dim hallway where the moonlight is bright enough to silhouette me, but not bright enough to show much detail.
The gang has the angel cornered.
He’s putting up a good fight, but they’ve realized that he’s injured—not to mention chained to an awkward, heavy cart—and won’t give up now that they smell blood.
I cross my arms behind me and hold the wings behind my back. They wobble, out of balance. It’s like holding up a flagpole with my arms contorted. I wait until I can hold them steady, then step forward.
Desperately hoping that the wings look right in the shadows, I kick over a side table with a surprisingly intact vase on it. The unexpected crash gets their attention.
For a second, everyone is silent as they look on my dark silhouette. I hope to all that’s holy and unholy that I look like an Angel of Death. If it was well lit, they would see a skinny teenage girl trying to hold oversized wings behind her back. But it’s dark, and they are hopefully seeing the one thing that makes their blood run cold.
“What have we here?” I ask in what I hope is a tone of deadly amusement. “Michael, Gabriel, come see this,” I call out behind me as though there are more of us. Michael and Gabriel are the only two angel names I can think of. “The monkeys seem to think they can attack one of our own now.”
The men freeze. Everyone stares at me.
In that moment, while I hold my breath, possibilities roll around the room like a roulette wheel.
Then, a really bad thing happens.
My right wing wobbles, then slips down a notch or two. In my rush to right it, I wiggle to get a better grip, but that just brings more attention to it as the wing waves up and down.
In the long second before everyone absorbs what just happened, I see the angel rolling his eyes heavenward, like a teenager in the presence of overwhelming lameness. Some people just have no sense of gratitude.
The angel is the first one to break the silence. He heaves his cart up and swings it at the three guys in front of him, crashing through them like a bowling ball.
Three of the others come for me.
I drop my wings and scuttle to their left. The trick with fighting multiple assailants is to avoid fighting them all at the same time. Unlike in the movies, attackers don’t wait in line to kick your ass; they want to pounce all at once like a pack of wolves.
I dance in a semicircle around them until the guy closest to me is in the way of the other two. It only takes a second for them to run around their buddy, but that’s enough time for me to snap a solid kick to his groin. He doubles over, and though I’m dying to accept the invitation to knee him in the face, his buddies take precedence.
I dance around to the other side of the doubled-over guy, making the others fall back into a line to get around him. I sweep the injured guy’s feet, and he comes crashing down on wifebeater number two. The remaining guy pounces on me and we roll on the ground in a grapple for the top position.
I end up on the bottom. He outweighs me by a hundred pounds, but this is a position I’ve practiced fighting from over and over.
Men tend to fight differently with a woman than they do with men. The overwhelming majority of fights between men and women start with the man attacking from behind, and almost instantly end on the ground with the woman on the bottom. So a good female fighter needs to know how to fight on her back.
As we struggle, I wriggle my leg out from under him for leverage. Brace. Then tip him over to one side with a twist of my hip.
He flips onto his back. Before he can get his bearings again, I slam my heel down on his groin.
I’m up in a flash and kicking his head before he recovers. I kick him so hard his head whiplashes back and forth.
“Nice.” The angel stands watching in the moonlight behind his bloody cart.
Around him are the moaning bodies of our intruders. Some of the bodies are so still I can’t tell if they’re alive. He nods appreciatively as though he sees something he likes. I let myself have an internal tongue-lashing when I realize I’m pleased by his approval.
A guy staggers up and runs for the door. He holds his head as though afraid it will fall off. As if that was their cue, three more get up and stumble out the door without looking back. The rest lie panting on the ground.
I hear a weak laugh and realize it’s the angel.
“You looked ridiculous with those wings,” he says. His lip is bleeding and so is a cut above his eye. But he looks relaxed as his smile lights up his face.
I dig out the bike lock key from my pocket with trembling hands and toss it to him. He catches it even though he’s still chained.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say. It sounds less shaky than I feel. The post-fight adrenaline has me literally trembling. The angel unlocks himself, stretches, and cracks his wrists. Then he rips a denim jacket off one of the groaning guys on the floor and tosses it to me. I gratefully put it on even though it’s about ten sizes too big.
He goes back into the corner office while I quickly roll his wings in the blanket. I run to the filing cabinet to grab the sword, then meet him in the lobby as he comes back out with my pack. I strap the blanket onto the pack, trying not to cinch it too hard under his gaze, then load up. I wish I had a pack for him but he wouldn’t be able to carry it on his wounded back anyway.
When he sees the sword, his face breaks into a glorious smile as if it’s a long-lost friend rather than a pretty piece of metal. His look of sheer joy stops my breath for a moment. It’s a look I thought I’d never see again on anyone’s face. I feel lighter just being close to it.
“You had my sword the whole time?”
“It’s my sword now.” My voice comes out harsher than the situation calls for. His happiness is so human that I forgot for an instant what he really is. I dig my nails into my palm to remind myself never to let my thoughts slip again.
“Your sword? You wish,” he says. What I wish is that he would stop sounding so damned human. “Do you have any idea how loyal she’s been to me over the years?”
“She? You’re not one of those people who name their cars and coffee mugs, are you? It’s an inanimate object. Get over it.”
He reaches for the sword. I step back, not wanting to hand it over.
“What are you going to do, fight me for her?” he asks. He sounds like he’s close to laughing.
“What are you going to do with it?”
He sighs, seeming tired. “Use it as a crutch, what do you think?”
There is a moment when a decision hangs in the air. The truth is that he doesn’t need the sword to beat me now that he’s free and on his feet. He could just take it, and we both know it.
“I saved your life,” I say.
He arches an eyebrow. “Questionable.”
“Twice.”
He finally drops the hand that had been reaching for the sword. “You’re not going to give me back my sword, are you?”
I grab Paige’s wheelchair, stick the sword in the seatback pocket. So long as he’s too tired to argue, I’m better off maintaining control. Either he really is exhausted, or he’s decided to just let me carry it for him like a knight’s little squire. By the way he glances at the sword with a half grin, I’m guessing it’s the latter reason.
I wheel Paige’s chair around and roll out.
“I don’t think I’ll be needing that chair anymore,” says the angel. He sounds exhausted, and I’m willing to
he wouldn’t say no if I offered to push him in the chair.“It’s not for you. It’s for my sister.”
He is silent as we walk into the night, and I know he thinks Paige will never see the wheelchair.
He can go to Hell.