World After (28 page)

He unrolls it, letting its contents fall onto the stage.

“Tell us, Man,” says Uriel. “Tell everyone what you had hidden in this cloth.”

The man starts hyperventilating in loud, raspy breaths, looking wildly at the crowd. When he doesn’t say anything, his guard grabs his hair and yanks his head back.

“Feathers,” the prisoner gasps out. “A… a handful of feathers.”

“And?” asks Uriel.

“Ha… hair. A lock of golden hair.”

“And what else, Man?” asks Uriel in a freezing voice.

The prisoner’s eyes dart around, looking trapped and desperate. His guard yanks back his head again so that his neck looks like it’s about to snap.

“Fingers.” The man sobs. Tears streak down his face, and I wonder what he did for a living before the civilized world came to an end. A doctor? A teacher? A grocery clerk?

“Two… severed… fingers,” he says between gasps. His guard lets him go. He huddles on the stage, shaking.

“What was the source of these feathers, hair, and fingers?”

The guard raises his hand and the man cringes, shielding his face.

“I got them from someone else,” says the man. “I didn’t hurt anybody. I swear. I never hurt anybody.”

“Where did they come from?” asks Uriel.

“I don’t know,” cries the man.

The guard grabs him by the arms, and I can almost hear his bones crunching.

The man cries out in pain. “Angel.” He falls to his knees, crying. His eyes dart around the hostile crowd in terror. “They’re angel parts.” He almost whispers, but the audience is silent and I’m sure they can hear him.

“A
NGEL
PARTS
,”
says Uriel in his booming voice. “The monkeys are slicing up our injured brethren before they can recover. They are trading our feathers, fingers, and other parts for currency. And you all know how long and painful it can be to grow back fingers, not to mention the parts we can’t grow back.”

Angels roar, restless with violence.

Uriel lets the righteous anger build with the masses. “For so long we have waited. For so long we have let monkeys infest this beautiful land, letting them believe that
they
are the most favored species in God’s universe. They still don’t understand why they’ve had unprecedented free reign over Earth for so long. They’re so arrogant and stupid that they don’t even realize that no one else is dumb enough to make a legendary battlefield their home.”

The crowd chuckles and hollers.

Uriel smiles at them. “But I have amazing news, brothers and sisters. News that will put humans like this in their rightful place. News that will allow us to punish them with God’s blessing.”

The crowd quiets.

“You’ve heard the rumors,” says Uriel. “You’ve heard the speculations. I’m here to tell you that they are true. The signs are here.
We have definitive
proof
of the reason why Gabriel the Messenger brought us here to Earth.”

The audience murmurs excitedly.

“We don’t have to wonder anymore, brothers and sisters. We don’t have to argue and debate about whether this is a drill or a skirmish with the Fallen or just another warning to the humans while they peck at us with their pebbles and rocks.” He pauses for dramatic effect.

The crowd quiets.

Uriel sweeps the crowd with his eyes. “Biblical locusts are here.”

A low murmur quickly bursts into an excited roar.

He lets the noise build before putting up his hands to quiet them. “As many of you know, part of my job is to visit the Abyss. Yesterday, I opened the Bottomless Pit. From it, black smoke rose and darkened the sun and the air. Out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth. Just as it was foretold, their faces were the faces of men and they had tails like powerful scorpions. Thousands upon thousands. Pouring into the sky.”

As if on cue, all the angels in the crowd turn the same direction to look up at the sky. I see the dark cloud on the horizon before I hear what they hear.

The cloud explodes, spitting out more darkness, growing ever larger. A low buzzing quickly turns into a thunderous roar.

I’ve heard this before.

The sound of swarming scorpions.

Everyone is silent and still while we all watch the roiling cloud rush toward us.

Uriel raises his arms like he’s ready to hug the crowd. “We have our confirmation, brothers and sisters. What we have been waiting for. What we have been
bred
for. What we have
lived, breathed
, and
dreamt
of is finally here!”

Uriel’s voice feels like a booming command in my head.

“We will be like—”

Gods.

“—Heroes of Old!”

He takes a deep breath. “Finally.” Another breath, his chest swelling with satisfaction. “It’s time for Judgment Day. The legendary apocalypse is HERE!”

A
S
EVERYONE
takes a moment to absorb what he’s saying, the horde of scorpion locusts hurls toward us.

I want to shout that he’s lying. That the scorpions are his creations, not biblical locusts. But I lose my chance because the crowd goes nuts.

Warriors raise their swords and stab the sky. They shout war cries that shatter the twilight.

Their wings flex, bursting out of the sheaths that disguise them.

Madeline’s carefully placed feathers fly everywhere. Glitter and fluff float into the air and drift like a scene in an old-time ticker-tape parade.

I shrink back, wishing I could disappear. Ironically, Andi does too, so that we continue to look like a matching set.

Bloodlust pulses in the air like sprays of pheromone. The air is thick with it and getting thicker.

Then the terrible thing happens.

Beside us on the stage, a warrior grabs the angel-parts dealer and lifts him above his head. The guy squirms like a kid as his glasses fall off. The angel heaves him into the crowd.

A hundred arms grab the poor man and pull him down into the engulfing center of the angelic masses. The man screams and screams.

The multitude shoves each other to try to reach the man. Bloody bits of cloth and bigger, wet chunks I don’t want to think about fly out of the place where he landed.

The warrior angels rage and yell as they restlessly jostle each other, cheering on the ones tearing at the man who is drowning in their violence.

The crowd is peppered with humans.

From here, the humans look small and terrified as they realize what’s going on. Most of them are women, and they look especially vulnerable in their scanty dresses and heels.

The scorpions thunder above, darkening the sky as they fly by. The wind gains force from countless wings, mixing with the shouts of the crowd. The frantic energy whips up the bloodlust in the drunken warriors.

People panic and run.

And like cats whose instincts get triggered by a fleeing mouse, the warriors pounce.

It’s a massacre.

The ones trapped in the center of the crowd have no place to run, although they try. It’s too crowded for the angels to use their swords. They grab the humans with their bare hands.

Screams fill the night as the center of the crowd tightens in on itself while the edges disperse as people fan out. The angels seem to enjoy the chase as they let humans run away from the crowd before tackling them.

One warrior punches his fist into a waiter’s stomach and pulls out a stringy, bloody mass that can only be his intestines. He drapes them over a screaming woman like fine jewelry. The angels around him roar their approval and punch their fists into the sky in a crazed frenzy.

From the stage, I can see the color of blood spreading across the crowd in a spill that just won’t stop.

Andi is screeching in panic. She turns and runs, hopping down from the stage and into the night.

My instincts yell at me to do the same but the stage is the least crowded, the safest of all the areas I can see. But being on stage during a riot is like being under a ten-thousand-watt spotlight when every cell of my body needs to be hiding in the dark.

Even Uriel seems to be at a loss as to what to do. The jerky motions of his head and the tense expression on his face when he turns to talk to his aides tell me this isn’t part of the plan.

He meant to get everyone drunk, excited, and riled up enough to break taboos tonight. But he clearly didn’t expect this. Maybe if he was a warrior instead of a politician, he would have predicted their response. He would have known that their veneer of civilized behavior was just waiting for an excuse to be shredded.

In pockets of the crowd, angels who’ve been shoving each other in the race to catch a human start throwing punches at each other.

It’s turning into a brawl as well as a massacre. Some of them take to the air to get more room and the chaos becomes three-dimensional.

M
Y
PERIPHERAL
vision has been tracking a movement that’s just now coming to my attention. Someone is hurrying through the throng toward the stage.

I try not to let my imagination leap to where it wants to go. But I can’t help it. I’m not usually a girl who hopes for a damsel-in-distress rescue but no matter the odds against it, this would be a freakin’ fantastic time for Raffe to come and sweep me into the sky.

But it’s not him.

It’s Beliel. His giant shoulders cut through the chaos as he shoves his way forward. My eyes search the crowd behind Beliel for Raffe but I see no sign of him.

Disappointment kicks me so hard, I want to start crying.

I need to find a way out of this.

Alone.

Lots of distraction—that’s good. Murderous angels everywhere—that’s bad.

That’s about as far as my frozen brain will go.

Beliel climbs onto the stage and shoves his way through the angels surrounding Uriel.

The screams, the yells, the smell of blood all assault me. My brain and muscles want to seize up and it takes everything I’ve got to keep myself from vaulting into the lethal crowd like Andi did. My choices are to stand here until angels converge on me or run into the slaughter and hope against hope that I can sneak out of here.

I’ve never had a panic attack and I’m hoping I’m not about to now. But I’m hyper-aware of what a flimsy, inconsequential creature I am compared to these demigods. Did I think for a second that I could have my own agenda among them? That I could beat any of them? I’m a little nobody, a nothing. By all the laws of nature, I should be crawling under a table and crying for mommy.

Only, relying on mommy is what other people do.

I get cold comfort from that. I’ve always been on my own and I’ve managed okay so far, haven’t I?

In my head, I run through a list of vulnerable body parts that makes size and strength irrelevant. Eyes, throat, groin, knees—even the biggest, toughest men have vulnerable spots that take very little force to damage. This thought soothes me enough that I can start looking for a way out.

As I survey the scene with a little less panic, I notice someone new on the stage stairs.

Raffe stands on the steps, as still as a statue, watching me.

In the twilight, his white-wing covering sparkles like stars in the summer sky. I never would have guessed that beneath that covering lies a pair of scythe-edged demon wings.