Blest (16 page)

Claire edged closer, looking around the corner. The alleys and rotting old brick buildings flattened into a pock-marked parking lot. Ahead, Claire could see a raised highway humming with the occasional truck or car. Lumen paced across the vacant lot beside a boarded brick warehouse. She slipped in and out of the shadows, but her white wings reflected the streetlights with an almost candle-like glow.

Claire stayed behind her, keeping a good distance, occasionally ducking behind a sunken stone staircase or a parked van. Lumen didn’t even turn around. She fluidly picked her way underneath the overpass, ran across a street, and disappeared into a carefully manicured lawn. It was full of trees sporting leaves that were ruby-red and copper-gold, shimmering from the headlights that swam across the overpass and into the night.

As Claire reached the park, the sounds of the highway faded behind her. The trees stood still in the night, as if they were holding their breath. Claire peered through the gloom, but she couldn’t see anything except for a strange, pinkish glow blurring the tress ahead.
The Portal?
Her heart raced. What if she stumbled into some angel gathering and they decided to banish her to Slag for spying? She tried to reassure herself that spying didn’t violate the Pact, but Shane had said that the Tribunal always ruled in favor of the angels.

She shook her head and pressed ahead into the darkness, chasing after the light. Somewhere, an owl hooted. A few crickets chirped. Claire tried to control her breathing as she got closer to the pink glow. She dropped to a crouch and crept up a small hill, hiding behind an old oak tree. In half-excitement and half-dread, she peered past it. And then she swore.

The pink glow was coming from the Gateway Arch, the 600-something foot monument that stuck out as one of the marvels of the St. Louis skyline. It wasn’t a Portal, it was just some fancy lights at night. There were no angels to be seen. Lumen had slipped away. She let out a long breath, blinking in disappointment.

But then she heard a thump right behind her. Claire grabbed her knife and whirled around, aiming the blade at the darkness, ready to stab at her attacker. She caught her breath and stopped—just in time to avoid stabbing Jim.

Jim put his hands up to show Claire that he was unarmed, and tried not to show his surprise that she was. She kept the knife pointed at his chest for another heartbeat, as if she was really thinking about stabbing him, then shoved the weapon back underneath her black belt. Even in the dark, he could tell that the blade was red, like it was made from some special kind of steel.

“Are you following me?” she hissed.

“No!” he said, trying to sound innocent. It was a flimsy half-truth. He wasn’t following her. Technically, he had just been watching over her and making sure she didn’t get into trouble. Any more trouble, that is. He had observed Claire with the rest of the demons and he hadn’t liked what he’d seen.

“You weren’t, huh?” Claire challenged, sneering at him. She reminded him of a feral animal. A beautiful feral animal. She flicked her hair out of her eyes and gestured at the trees all around them. “So what, this is your favorite spot and you happened to be hanging out here when I dropped by?”

He smiled a little and shrugged. “Yeah, it’s scenic. What can I say?”

Instead of laughing like the old Claire he had known, Claire spun around and sniffed in disgust. He caught a flash of the cage tattoo on her neck, right between her glowering, red wings. Had they gotten even redder since he had seen her, or was that his imagination?

Claire’s back tensed, as if she had realized something. She turned back around. “You tricked me. You wanted me to come here, didn’t you?”

“Huh?”

She jabbed the knife at his chest and he staggered back. “Why are you still screwing with me?”

Jim squinted at her in confusion. The anger and hate on Claire’s face made her unrecognizable. “What are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about?” Claire snapped. “Your freaking graffiti on the tower.” She gestured at the Gateway Arch in front of them, glowing pink against the gloom. “You drew this thing. You drew all those stupid feathers, like we still had . . . still . . .”

Silence fell between them like a wall. “My painting?” Jim stammered. “What do you mean? When did you see it?” He remembered painting something on the tower, but he wasn’t even sure anymore what he’d painted.

“You shouldn’t follow me.” Claire’s voice was shaking. Jim couldn’t tell if it was from rage or something else. “You could get in trouble. Not everyone is as stupidly tolerant of angels as I am.” She clenched her fists. “And I’m getting less and less tolerant of them.”

“I wanted to—”

“What, Jim? You wanted to
what
?”

All he’d wanted was to protect her. He missed her. He had been hiding in a tree, standing on a branch, when Gunner hijacked the first car. He had lost them after that, but then he saw them flying over the high school and followed them to St. Louis. He hadn’t told the Feather where he was going. Sydney had been cold ever since she saw him with Claire. But now, as he saw the wild gleam in Claire’s eyes, he wished he’d at least told Miles or Leo where he was going. If the Scale decided to break the Pact, there was no one here to help him, not even General Lumen.

And what had she been doing here, anyway? He had been just as surprised to see Lumen as Claire was to see him. What if the Portal was right around the corner?

He cleared his throat. “Why are you following General Lumen?”

“Nothing I do is any of your business,” Claire snapped. “You made that clear last week. Just leave me alone.” With that, she took off with one flap of her wings, a fading crimson crescent against the sky.

A bitter gust of wind careened through the trees, making them whisper all around him. Jim blinked away tears he knew shouldn’t be there. All he had wanted was to make sure Claire was safe from the demons, that they didn’t hurt her. That’s why he had broken up with her. But now what? She was getting hurt anyway. By becoming one of them.

• • •

Instead of flying back home, Jim decided to go to Sydney’s house. The rest of the Feather was training there and he was getting the feeling that the wings on his back were starting to mean a lot more. Everyone had seen the demons changing after the Drop last week. They had become more determined, so the Feather had to react the same way. It felt like they were trying to grow up in fast forward. The demons’ childish bullying and taunting had morphed into something ugly after Shane’s death. Nora and Miles were convinced that it was because the Planewalker they had been tracking had finally broken through Slag to come to Pearlton. Whatever that meant.

Jim landed quietly on Sydney’s roof and looked out across the lake to try to focus, staring at the cloud-blurred sky and the massive house on the other side of the water. Claire’s house. He thought back to the birthday party, before any of them had known there was such a thing as demons and angels. When Shane was just another aggressive football bully.

A hand gently landed on his shoulder. “Are you thinking about her?”

Jim startled. He wasn’t sure what to say.

“Don’t,” Sydney went on. “She doesn’t deserve your thoughts, or your feelings. She’s a demon, Jim, like the rest of them. My mom says she’s even helping lead them now, after Shane died. She and Gunner are heading the Scale.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Jim,” Syndey said. “They are our
enemies
. Don’t feel sympathy for them. When we fight—and it’s going to be soon—they won’t feel any for you.” Her hand left his shoulder, and he heard her clacking down the wobbly ladder leading down into the attic. He heaved a frustrated sigh and followed her, leaving the mid-autumn chill behind.

The Feather was lounging around the fireplace in Sydney’s living room, in the same positions as always. Leo splayed on one couch, a leg hanging over an armrest. Miles and Nora tapped on their phones. The only difference was that Miles had crutches leaning against his side of the couch and a cast around his ankle.

Miles looked up when Jim walked through the doorway after Sydney. “Hey, man,” he said, licking his lips. “Where’ve you been? You got any news?”

Jim winced. Miles had turned a little angrier, a little more bloodthirsty since his ankle had broken. He blamed the demons for not being able to fly, or at least not fly very well. He said that landing with a broken ankle was just about impossible.

Jim nodded slowly. “I want to wait for General Lumen to get back, though.”

Sydney looked at him in surprise.

Jim tried to avoid her eyes. Ever since she had seen him with Claire, Sydney always seemed to be interrogating him, even when she didn’t say a word. He’d told her that he ended things with Claire, but she hadn’t even blinked at the news.

“What kind of ‘news’ did you get?” Sydney asked. It sounded like a challenge.

“It’s important,” Jim said, keeping his voice flat, looking at the swirling pattern of the red rug in front of the fireplace. Finding out that Claire had seen Lumen in the city had been an accident. But he knew now what she had become. And he couldn’t let the demons find the Portal, wherever it was.

“He’s obviously got news,” Nora said, not looking up from her phone. “The Planewalker is in Pearlton. How could that not result in news?”

Jim shoved Leo’s foot aside with his elbow and leaned against the couch’s armrest. “You’ve never actually told me. What’s a Planewalker?” he asked, desperate for a chance to make Sydney stop staring at him. “What makes them so bad?”

The other angels all went stiff at once. Leo shimmied his way into a sitting position, mouth open. Miles looked away. Nora finally took pity on him. “There are only a few recorded incidences of Planewalkers. But, basically, they’ve absorbed some of the powers from Glisten, so they’re the most powerful demons of all. They can cause tornadoes, they can control the weather and use it as a weapon. They can manipulate the Field. And this one—he figured out how to use these powers to break free from Slag and return to the Field.”

Jim frowned. “But how did they absorb powers from Glisten?”

Nora paled, but forged on. “By . . .” her voice fell almost to a whisper. “By drinking angel blood. A lot of it.”

Jim felt like he was going to throw up. No one else spoke.

General Lumen suddenly appeared in the doorway. The fire played on her broad, stern face, twinkling on her silver-streaked hair. “The Planewalkers want to get to Glisten, so that they can open up the gateway to Slag and free all the demons imprisoned there. And when demons get into Glisten, they can abuse the powers the Tribunal keeps in check,” Lumen said. “They’ll be able to create matter out of thin air and read human minds.”

She surveyed the room with an unwavering gaze. “A Planewalker has indeed made it back to the Field,” she told them. “He’s leading the Scale of Pearlton and he knows there’s a Portal here. His name is Carlos.”

Carlos
, Jim thought, his heart racing. Wasn’t that the name of the demon who had been chasing his parents when his mom died? A terrible thought shot through his mind. Had Carlos killed his mom so that he could
drink her blood
and absorb some of her powers? His hands clenched into fists at his side.

“But how?” Sydney asked frantically. “How could he have figured out that one of the Portals is here?”

General Lumen gritted her teeth. “I don’t know, but I have a few guesses. None of which are very encouraging.” She nodded at Nora and Miles. “I just met with your parents at the Observatory downtown. They confirmed the reports.”

“Mom,” Sydney said, “Jim also says that he has news for you.”

Her eyes shot to Jim and locked him in place. “You do?”

Jim sat up straight and gulped. “I was just flying around downtown and I saw—the demons were following you tonight.” He bit down on his tongue, hard, trying not to say Claire’s name.

“I already knew that,” General Lumen said acidly, her ice-blue eyes resting on Jim. He tried not to shrink back. “Anything else?”

“Um . . .” She knew he was holding something back, he could tell. His mind raced through different details he could throw at her. “Knives,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “They have weird knives.”

“What?” She seemed genuinely shocked by this information.

“The blades, they’re red.”

“Crafted from Slag,” Nora said in awe. “I didn’t know that Shredders could even make it to the Field.”

“Obviously they can!” General Lumen snapped. “Carlos must have brought them. This means he’s really thinking about breaking the Pact.” She turned to Jim. “Angels are Durable. They can’t be shot by human bullets or wounded by human weapons. But Shredders are made from steel mined from The Weeping Mountains in Slag. That’s a different matter.”

“Literally,” Miles whispered to Jim. “Different matter. Get it?”

Sydney glared Miles’s grin straight off his face. Jim thought that, as much as she resented General Lumen’s mothering capabilities, Sydney obviously admired her military ones. She was learning them very well.

General Lumen disappeared around a corner into the hallway. There was a noisy rattling of a lock, and then she stalked back into the living room carrying an ancient wooden chest. She dropped it heavily in the center of the room before bending over and flicking open the latch.

Inside, set against a dark velvet lining, there were knives. The blades were pearly white, with polished blue handles that looked as if they were crafted from glass. The Feather leaned in closer.

“I never thought knives could be beautiful before,” Sydney said, swiping her blond hair out of her face.

“They’re not made to be beautiful!” General Lumen barked. The angels all jumped back to attention.

“These are Sky Knives. The blades are straight from the forges of Glisten, crafted during the Millennium Wars.” She eyed each of them in turn, leaning over the chest. “These. Are. Not. For screwing around.”

“But we get to have one?” Leo asked eagerly, sticking his face between Sydney and Jim’s shoulders.

“I wish you didn’t. But if Carlos has armed the demons, you need to have something, too.”

“An arms race, always a good idea for conflict resolution,” Nora whispered.

“What did you say?” General Lumen growled.

“Nothing!” she squeaked.

General Lumen frowned. “Now pick a blade. Angels your age are not supposed to get these. You’re not supposed to hold them, you’re not supposed to wield them, you’re not supposed to use them. They’re only for when you turn eighteen and go to the Academy in Glisten for two years and the Elders there teach you how to grow up.”

They scrambled to get closer to the chest. Jim ran his hand down the polished glass hilt of one sky knife and a shiver shot through his spine. Somehow, the cool feel of the weapon felt right in his hand, like it was made for him. When he clasped his hand around the hilt, he felt a rush of heady power, of strength, like a second wind. Jim smiled and stared at the white blade in wonder. Around him, all the other angles were doing the same.

General Lumen saw their faces. “These may be the first thing from Glisten you’ve ever held. But, if you’re lucky, they won’t be the last. You’ll go to the Academy, serve as a Guardian on the Field for ten years, and then you can return to Glisten or become a General.” She tapped the gem-studded bracelet hanging from her wrist, twinkling in the firelight. “Everything from Glisten is special. It transcends the Field. This is just a hint of what being an angel really means.”

There was an awed silence. “It looks like a cloud,” Leo said, examining his blade.

Nora swatted his arm.

“It does!” he insisted.

General Lumen ignored him. She pounded her fist on the chest and another compartment popped open, showing a jumble of leather scabbards. She tossed one to each of the angels. “Hook these to your belts and wear the knives at all times. This is all from Glisten, so the humans won’t be able to see any of it. You can’t afford to not be protected. There are too few angels in Pearlton to defend the Portal.”

The Feather clumsily picked at their belts and fumbled with their knives. Leo dropped his twice, making it clang on the floor and prompting a frustrated muttering from General Lumen. Jim looped his around his belt, then stepped in to help Leo, who thanked him with a nod.

General Lumen clasped her hands in front of her and waited. The fire crackled and popped, casting her long shadow across the wall. “You look like Guardians instead of Fledglings, which is all we can ask for right now. We can’t very well ask for you to fight like them, too.” Her face softened. “I know this may feel like a burden right now. Three decades ago, during the War of the Broken Wall, I remember thinking how unfortunate I was, to have to leave Glisten and serve on the Field when there was no Pact.” She straightened. “But it’s a privilege to serve, remember that. You’re defending everything that is good in this world, in Glisten. Durability, the wings . . .” Her face turned wistful, then hardened again. “And right now, a Planewalker from Slag is leading demons on a hunt for the Portal. We need to stop him.”