Angelfall

He leans forward so he doesn’t crush his wings with the back of the seat.

“How does it look?” His beautifully wide shoulders and clean line of his back are now accented by the wings. Around his neck is a silver bowtie shot playfully with curls of red that match my dress. It also matches his cummerbund around his waist. Aside from a little smudge of dirt on his jaw, he looks like he just walked out of a Hollywood magazine.

The shape of his back looks about right for a jacket that’s not perfectly tailored for wings. I have a flash of the magnificence of his snowy wings spreading out behind him as he stood to face his enemies on top of that car the first time I saw him. I feel a little of what his loss must mean to him.

I nod. “It looks good. You look right.”

His eyes look up into mine. In them, I catch a hint of gratitude, a hint of loss, a hint of worry.

“Not that…you didn’t look right before. I mean, you always look…magnificent.” Magnificent? I almost roll my eyes. What a dope. I don’t know why I said that. I clear my throat. “Can we go already?”

He nods. He hides the teasing smile but I can see it in his eyes.

“Drive past that crowd and up to the checkpoint.” He points to our left, where it looks like a crowded, free-for-all market. “When the guards stop you, tell them you want to go to the aerie. Tell them you heard they sometimes let in women.”

He climbs into the back seat and crouches in the shadows. He pulls the old blanket over himself, the one that used to wrap his wings.

“I’m not here,” he says.

“So…explain to me again why you’re hiding instead of just walking through the gate with me?”

“Angels don’t walk through the checkpoint. They fly directly to the aerie.”

“Can’t you just tell them you’re injured?”

“You’re like a little girl demanding answers to questions during a covert operation. Why is the sky blue, daddy? Can I ask that man with the machine gun where the bathroom is? If you don’t stay quiet, I’m going to have to dump you. You need to do what I tell you, when I tell you, no questions or hesitation about it. If you don’t like it, find someone else to pester into helping you.”

“Okay, okay. I got it. Geez, some people are so grouchy.”

I start the engine and inch out of our parking spot. The homeless guys grumble, and one of them bangs the hood with his fist as he slides off.

CHAPTER 27

I drive through the crowd on Montgomery St. at a speed that’s maybe half of what I could do on foot. People get out of the way, but reluctantly, and only after giving me assessing looks. I check the doors again to make sure they’re locked. Not that the locks would stop anyone should they choose to break the windows.

Luckily, we are not the only ones in a car here. There’s a small line of cars waiting at the checkpoint, surrounded by a mass of people on foot. Apparently, they are all waiting to cross the checkpoint. I go as far as I can and stop at the end of the line of cars.

There is an unusually large percentage of women waiting to cross the checkpoint. They are clean and dressed as though going to a party. Women stand in high heels and silk dresses among the ragged men, and everyone behaves as though that’s normal.

The checkpoint is a breach in a tall chain-link fence that blocks the streets around the financial district. With what’s left of the district, it wouldn’t be too hard to permanently fence it off. But this is one of those temporary fences made of self-standing panels. The panels are co

It wouldn’t take much for a crowd to push it over and just walk on top of it. Yet the crowd respects the boundary as though it’s electrified.

Then I see that it is, in a way.

Humans patrol the fence from the other side and poke a metal rod through whenever they see someone getting too close. When someone is poked, there’s a zap sound along with a blue spark of electricity. They’re using some kind of cattle prod to keep people away. All of the prodders except one are grim-faced men who show no emotion as they patrol and occasionally prod.

The female prodder is my mother.

I bang my head against the steering wheel when I see her. It doesn’t make me feel any better.

“What’s wrong?” Raffe asks.

“My mother is here.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Probably.” I drive forward a few feet as the line moves.

My mother is more emotional about her job than her fellow prodders. She reaches as far as the fence will let her to shock as many people as possible. At one point, she even cackles as she zaps a man for as long as she can before he staggers out of her reach. She looks for all the world as though she’s enjoying inflicting pain on people.

Despite appearances, I recognize fear in my mother when I see it. If you didn’t know her, you’d think her zest comes from malice. But there’s a good chance that she doesn’t even recognize her victims as people.

She probably thinks she’s trapped in a cage in hell surrounded by monsters. Maybe as payment for a deal made with the devil. Maybe just because the world conspires against her. She probably thinks the people who get close to the fence are actually monsters in disguise stalking her cage. Someone has miraculously given her a weapon to keep those monsters at bay. So she’s using this rare chance to fight back.

“How did she end up here?” I wonder out loud.

Dirt smears her cheeks and greasy hair, and her clothes are ripped at the elbow and knees. She looks like she’s been sleeping on the ground. But she does look healthy and fed, with rosy coloring in her cheeks.

“Everyone on the road ends up here if they don’t get themselves killed first.”

“How?”

“Beats me. You humans have always had some kind of herding instinct that seems to bring you together. And this is the largest herd around.”

“Town. Not herd. Towns are for people. Herds are for animals.”

He snorts rudely in response.

It probably is better to leave her there instead of trying to take her with me inside the aerie. It’s hard to be stealthy with my mother around. That could cost us Paige’s life. There’s not much I can do to ease her torment when she’s like this. The people will eventually learn to stay away from her while she patrols the fence. She’s safer here. We’re all safer with her here. For now.

My justifications don’t ease my guilt about leaving her. But I can’t think of a better solution.

I tear my gaze away from my mother and try to focus on my surroundings. I can’t be distracted if we’re all to stay alive.

In front of me, the crowd starts to show a pattern. Women and teen girls, all dressed and made up to the best of their resources, press up against the people in front of them, hoping to get the attention of the guards. Many of the girls are surrounded by people who look like parents or grandparents. The women often stand beside their men, sometimes with children.

The guards shake their heads at virtually everyone who requests entry. Occasionally, a woman, or a group of women refuse to move out of the way after they’ve been turned down, choosing, instead, to beg or break down crying. The angels seem not to care one way or another, but the crowd cares. The mob shoves the offending rejects into itself, mindlessly pushing them back with their shifting and shoving bodies, until the losers are ejected out at the rear of the crowd.

Occasionally, the guards let one through. From what I can tell, the ones let through are always female. While we inch up to the gate, two are admitted.

Both are women dressed in tight dresses and high heels, like me. One of them enters without a backward glance, clicking confidently away down the empty road on the other side of the gate. The other goes hesitantly, turning around to throw kisses at a man and two grubby children gripping the chain link of the fence. They scurry away from the fence when a man with a cattle prod approaches them.