Angelfall

The goal is to get my sister out of here, not to get momentary satisfaction. I lift Paige in my arms and stagger toward him.

“We’re leaving.” As soon as the words are out, I know it’s wishful thinking.

He puts down his clipboard and steps between us and the door. “By whose permission?” His voice is low and threatening. Utterly confident.

He suddenly cocks his head again, listening to something I can't hear. A frown mars his smooth skin.

I take two deep breaths, trying to blow the anger and fear out of my body. I gently put Paige down under a table.

Then I launch myself on him.

I hit him with everything I've got. No calculations, no thought, no plan. Just crazed, epic fury.

It isn't much compared to an angel, even one that's a runt. But I have the advantage of surprise.

My blow slams him onto an exam table, and I wonder how his hollow bones don’t break.

I whip out the angel sword from its scabbard. Angels are far stronger than men, but they can be vulnerable on the ground. No angel who is any good at flying would work in the basement where there are no windows for him to fly through. There is a good chance this one can’t take to the air very quickly.

Before the angel can recover from his fall, I thrust my sword at him, aiming for his neck.

Or I try to.

He's faster than I thought. He grabs my wrist and slams it into the table’s edge.

The pain is excruciating. My hand contracts open, letting the sword fly. It clatters across the concrete floor, far from my reach.

He gets up at leisure while I grab a scalpel from a tray. The scalpel feels flimsy and useless. I give my chances of wi

That just pisses me off all the more.

I throw my scalpel at him. It nicks his throat, causing blood to bubble out and stain his white coat.

I grab a chair and swing it at him before he recovers.

He tosses it aside as if I had thrown a crumpled ball of paper at him.

Almost before I can realize that he’s coming for me, he slams me down on the concrete and starts strangling the life out of me. He’s not just choking my air, he’s cutting off the blood to my brain.

Five seconds. That’s all I’ll have before losing consciousness with no blood flowing to my head.

I shoot my arms up between his like a wedge. Then I slam them out against his forearms.

It should have worked to bust me out of his strangle. It always worked during training.

But there isn’t even a slight easing of his grip. In my panic, I didn’t take into account his super-strength.

In a desperate final attempt, I clench my hands together, fingers interlaced. I draw back and hammer my fists down on the crook of his arm with everything I’ve got.

His elbow jerks back for a moment.

But then it pops right back into place.

Time’s up.

Like an amateur, I instinctively claw at his hands. But they might as well be steel clamped around my throat.

My heart pounds thunderously in my ears, getting ever more frantic. My head feels like it’s floating away.

The angel’s face is cold, indifferent. Dark spots bloom on his face. My heart sinks as I realize my vision is fading.

Blurring.

The edges getting darker.

CHAPTER 39

Something slams into the angel. I get a brief impression of hair and teeth, animal growling.

Something warm and wet splashes onto my shirt.

The pressure on my throat is suddenly gone. So is the weight of the angel.

I suck in a huge, burning breath. I curl into a ball, trying not to cough too much as the lovely cool air surges into my lungs.

There is blood on my shirt.

I become aware of wild grunts and growls. There is also the sound of retching.

The delivery man is retching behind his cadaver drawers. Even while retching, his eyes keep darting to a spot behind me. His eyes are so wide they look more white than brown. He’s staring at the place where the sounds are coming from. The source of all this blood soaking my clothes.

I have a strange reluctance to look even though I know I have to.

When I do look, I have trouble comprehending what I'm seeing. I don't know which thing to be shocked by, and my poor brain thrashes from one thing to another.

The angel's lab coat is soaked in blood  Around him lie chunks of quivering meat, like bits of liver torn and tossed on the floor.

A chunk of flesh has been ripped out of his cheek.

He’s thrashing so much he looks like he's in the throes of a very bad nightmare. Maybe he is. Maybe I am too.

Paige hunches over him. Her little hands grip his shirt to get a better hold on his trembling body. Her hair and clothes are splattered in blood. Her face drips with it.

Her mouth opens, showing rows of shiny teeth. At first, I think that someone has grafted long braces onto her teeth. But they’re not braces.

They’re razors.

She bites into the angel's throat. Worries it like a dog with a chew toy. Pulls back from the gushing torn flesh.

She spits out a chunk of bloody meat. It lands with a wet thunk on the floor next to the other bits of flesh.

She spits and gags. She is revolted, although it’s hard to tell if the revulsion is from her actions or from the taste. An unwanted memory of the way the low demons spat after biting into Raffe barges into my head.

They weren’t meant to eat angel flesh. The thought slips through the cracks in my mind and I instantly shove it back.

The delivery guy retches again, and my stomach churns, wanting to join him. Paige opens her mouth again in animal ferocity, ready to dive back into the quivering flesh.

“Paige!” My voice comes out thin and panicked, the end rising as though in question.

The girl who used to be my sister stops midway down to the dying angel and looks at me.

Her eyes are the wide baby brown of i

My throat is raw from the strangling, and I keep swallowing back a cough, which is handy because I need to swallow back my di

Paige unfolds away from the angel. She stands up on her own feet, without leaning against anything.

Then she takes two graceful, miraculous steps toward me.

She stops, as though remembering she was crippled.

I don’t dare to breathe. I stare at her, resisting the urge to run up and catch her in case she falls.

She spreads her arms out toward me in a pick-me-up gesture, the way she used to when she was a toddler. If not for the blood dripping down her face and streaking her stitched-up body, I would  have thought her expression as sweet and i

“Ryn-Ryn.” Her voice is on the verge of tears. It's the sound of a frightened little girl, one who's sure her big sister can make the monsters under her bed go away. Paige hasn't called me Ryn-Ryn since she was a baby.

I look at the angry stitches crisscrossing her face and body. I stare at her bruises—red and blue all over her poor face and body.

It’s not her fault. Whatever they did to her, she’s the victim, not the monster.

Where have I heard that before?

Something about that thought triggers an image. The image of those chewed-up girls hanging on the tree. Had that crazy couple said something like what I just thought? Is their mad conversation starting to make sense to me?

A thought sneaks into my head like poisoned gas. If Paige could only eat human flesh and nothing else, what would I do? Would I go so far as to use human bait to lure her, thinking I could help her?