Angelfall

“What can I do for you, sir?” Up close, his smile looks a little stiff. His eyes, although deferential when looking at Raffe, turn cold when he looks at me. Good for him. He doesn’t like working for the angels, and he likes humans cozying up to them even less.

“Give me a room.” Raffe’s arrogance dial is cranked all the way up. He stands at his full height and doesn’t bother to do more than glance at the man as he talks. Either he wants the clerk intimidated enough to not ask any questions, or all the angels behave like that toward humans and he doesn’t want to be remembered as being different. I’m guessing both.

“The top floors are already all taken, sir. Will something a little lower be all right?”

Raffe sighs as though that’s an imposition. “Fine.”

The clerk glances my way, then scribbles something in his old-fashioned ledger. The clerk hands Raffe a key and says we’re in room 1712. I want to ask for an extra one for me, but think better of opening my mouth. Based on the women trying to find escorts into the building, I have a suspicion that the only humans allowed to move around on their own are the servants. So much for asking for my own room.

The clerk turns to me and says, “Feel free to take the elevator, Miss. The power is reliable here. The only reason we use keys instead of electronic cards is because the masters prefer it.”

Did he actually call the angels the masters? My fingers turn cold at the thought. Despite my determination to grab Paige and get the hell out of here, I can’t help but wonder if there’s anything I can do to help bring down these bastards.

It’s true that their control of what was once our world boggles my mind. They can power lights and elevators and ensure a steady supply of gourmet food. I suppose it could be magic. That seems to be as good an explanation as any these days. But I’m not quite ready to throw away centuries of scientific progress to start thinking like a medieval peasant.

I wonder if, a generation from now, people will assume everything in this building is run by magic. I clench my teeth at the thought. This is what the angels have reduced us to.

I take a good look at Raffe’s perfectly formed profile. No human could look that good. Just one more reminder that he’s not one of us.

I catch a glimpse of the clerk’s face as I look away. His eyes warm just enough to let me know that he approves of the grim look on my face when I look at Raffe. Smoothing his face back to polite professionalism, he tells Raffe to call on him should he need anything.

The short elevator hall leads to a vast open area. I take a quick peek after pushing the button for the elevator. Above me are rows and rows of balconies that go all the way up to the glass domed ceiling.

Angels circle above, flying in short hops from floor to floor. An outer ring of angels spiral up, while an i

I suppose they do this in order to avoid collisions, just the way our traffic patterns look organized from above. But despite its practical origins, the total effect is a stu

The elevator doors slide open with a ding, and I tear my eyes away from the magnificence above me.

Raffe stands beside me watching his peers flying. Before he shutters his eyes, I catch something that might have been despair.

Or longing.

I refuse to feel bad for him. Refuse to feel anything for him other than anger and hatred for the things his people have done to mine.

But the hatred doesn’t come.

Instead, sympathy trickles into me. As different as we are, we are in many ways kindred spirits. We’re just two people striving to get our lives back together again.

But then, I remember that he is, in fact, not a person at all.

I step into the elevator. It has the mirror, wood paneling, and red carpet you’d expect from an elevator in an expensive hotel. The doors start to slide shut with Raffe still standing outside. I put my hand out to keep the doors open.

“What’s wrong?”

He glances around self-consciously. “Angels don’t go into elevators.”

Of course, they fly to their floors. I playfully grab his wrists and spin him in a drunken circle, giggling for the benefit of any who might be watching. Then, I waltz us both into the elevator.

I press the button for the seventeenth floor. My stomach lurches with the elevator at the thought of having to escape from such a high place. Raffe doesn’t look so comfortable either. I suppose an elevator might seem like a steel coffin to someone who’s used to flying the open sky.

When the door opens, he quickly steps out. Apparently, the need to get out of a coffinlike machine takes precedence over the issue of being seen coming out of an elevator.

The hotel room turns out to be a full suite with a bedroom, a living room, and a bar. It's all marble and soft leather, plush carpet and picture windows. Two months ago, the view would have been breathtaking. San Francisco at its finest.

Now it makes me want to weep at the panoramic view of charred destruction.

I walk over to the window like a sleepwalker. I lean into it with my forehead and palms on the cool glass the way I might with my father’s gravestone.

The charred hills are strewn with leaning buildings like broken teeth in a burnt jawbone. Haight-Ashbury, the Mission, North Beach, South of Market, Golden Gate Park, all gone. Something breaks deep within me like glass being crunched underfoot.

Here and there, plumes of dark smoke reach into the sky like the dark fingers of a drowning man reaching up for the last time.

Still, there are areas that don’t look completely burned, areas that could house small neighborhood communities. San Francisco is known for its neighborhoods. Could some of them have survived the onslaught of asteroids, fires, raiders and disease?

Raffe pulls the curtains closed around me. “I don’t know why they left the curtains open.”

I know why. The maids are human. They want to mar this illusion of civilization. They want to make sure no one ever forgets what the angels did. I would have left the curtains open too.

By the time I pull myself away from the window, Raffe is hanging up the phone. His shoulders sag as exhaustion seems to finally catch up with him. “Why don’t you hit the shower? I just ordered some food.”

“Room service? Is this place for real? It’s hell on earth now and you guys order meals through room service?”

“Do you want it, or not?”

I shrug. “Well, yeah.” I’m not even embarrassed by my double standard. Who knows when I’ll get another meal? “What about my sister?”

“In due time.”

“I don’t have time, and neither does she.” And neither do you. How much time do we have before the freedom fighters hit the aerie?

As much as I want to have the resistance hit the angels as hard as possible, the thought of Raffe being caught in the attack churns my stomach. I’m tempted to tell him about seeing resistance fighters here, but I squelch that idea as soon as it comes. I doubt he could stand by and not set off the alarm for his people any more than I could if I knew the angels were attacking the resistance camp.

“Okay, Miss Short-on-Time, where would you like to look first? Should we start on the eighth floor or the twenty-first? How about the roof, or the garage? Maybe you could just ask the clerk at the desk where they might be holding her. There are other intact buildings in this district. Maybe we should start with one of them. What do you think?”

I’m horrified to find that my determination is melting into tears. I keep my eyes wide open to keep them from falling. I will not cry in front of Raffe.