World After

We’re so low, the sea sprays over me as it surges. Water swells, turning into whitewater and rolling below us. It feels like mile after mile of black and raging surf.

Raffe zigs one way, then the other. He makes sharp, unexpected turns after going straight for a while. Escape maneuvers.

The fog is so thick that there’s a chance the angels are chasing shadows. The roar of the waves and wind means the angels can’t hear Raffe’s wings as they pump powerfully through the air.

I’m shivering against his body. The icy spray and ocean wind are freezing me to the point of not being able to feel my arms around his neck or my legs around his torso.

We glide along in silence, slicing through the night. I have no idea how close the angels are or whether they’re even on our tail any more. I hear and see nothing in the fog glow. We take another sharp turn toward the ocean.

A face pops up in the fog.

Behind it, giant wings with feathers the color of mist.

He’s too close.

He slams into us.

We spin out of control, bat wings tangling with feathered ones.

Raffe whips his wing with its extended scythes and gouges into the feathered wings. The blades rip through the layers of feathers until they catch on the angel’s wing bone.

We all tumble together in a mass as we fall through the air.

Raffe stabilizes us with great sweeps but he can’t fight with his wings and fly too. He untangles their wings as the angel reaches for his sword.

Raffe doesn’t have a sword.

And he has me—a hundred pounds of dead weight that can only mess up his balance and fighting technique. His arms are holding me instead of being free to fight. His wings need to work that much harder to keep us in the air.

My only thought is that I am not going to end up truly dead this time in Raffe’s arms. I am not going to be one more wound on his soul.

The angel pulls out his sword.

Having trained with the staff, I know there are weapons that need distance to be used effectively. The sword is one of them.

Right now, the angel has enough space to reach back and skewer us or raise his sword and slice us. But if he was hugging us, a feeble cut would be the most he could do.

It’s just water. It’ll be cold as hell, but it won’t kill me if I fall.

Not right away, anyway.

It’s amazing how many times we have to go against our survival instincts to survive. I grip my legs even tighter around Raffe’s middle and push my upper body away from him.

His arms give way in surprise before they tighten back around me. That’s enough time for me to lean out and grab the angel’s sword arm in one hand and his high-collared tuxedo shirt in the other.

I lock my elbow and hold his sword arm to keep him from swinging toward us. I sure hope he’s not strong enough to crush my shoulder socket. With my other hand, I yank him forward.

It all happens within a second. If the angel had been expecting that move, there’s no way he would have let me do it. But what attacker expects his victim to pull him closer?

Without his wings fully in his control to balance him, I manage to pull the exceptionally light angel toward us.

Up close, his sword is less of a threat for skewering, but Raffe is forced to fly awkwardly to avoid shredding his wing on the blade. We teeter in the air, not far above the black waves.

Raffe holds me tight with one arm while using the other to fend off the angel who is trying to punch him.

I lean over and grab the sword’s hilt. I don’t have a chance of getting it away from him, but I might be able to distract him from his fight with Raffe. And if I’m really lucky, I might even convince the sword that an unauthorized user is trying to lift it.

We grapple in the air, awkwardly dipping, then gaining a little altitude, bobbing and twisting up and down above the water. I manage to grab the sword’s hilt with both my hands and although I can’t move it from the angel’s grip, I can angle it.

As soon as I do, the sword suddenly becomes heavy, so heavy that the angel’s arm flags.

“No!” the angel cries. There’s real horror in his voice as the sword threatens to drop from our hands.

Raffe slams him with the fist of his free arm. The angel lurches back.

His sword drops. And disappears into the water.

“No!” he cries again, horrified disbelief in his eyes as he looks at the dark water where his sword sank. I guess they don’t have scuba-diving angels to retrieve swords and other valuables from the bottom of the ocean.

He roars a war cry at us, bloodlust in his contorted face. Then he charges.

Two more angels appear out of the thick mist.

Not surprising, with all the noise the first angel is making, but my heart jumps anyway when I see them.

All three come at us. Raffe spins around and flies toward the open sea.

There’s no way he’s going to outfly them with me weighing him down.

“Let go,” I say into his ear.

Raffe holds me tighter like there’s no room for discussion.

“We’ll both be safer with me in the water than weighing you down during a fight.” Still, he holds on. “I can swim, Raffe. It’s no big deal.”

Something large slams into us from behind.

And Raffe’s arms jar loose. I shove away.

That first moment of falling feels like slow-mo, where every sensation is amplified. A sheer knee-jerk survival reaction makes me flail and grab the first thing I can.

One hand grabs air. The other hand grasps the tip of a feathered wing.

Having my entire weight on one wing, the angel twists and goes out of control. I cha

We plunge into the ocean together.

EVERY CELL in my body freezes, then explodes into ice shards. The ice needles pierce and collide all through me. At least, that’s what it feels like.

It’s the most intense when the water engulfs my head, as if the top of my head was the last bastion of warmth in my body. I need to shriek from the shock of it but my lungs are so frozen and contracted that shrieking is beyond me.

Dark turbulence rolls me around as I ca

I eventually stop tumbling but as soon as I stop, I’m not sure which way is up. My body tries to thrash around as the stopwatch on the air in my lungs ticks away.

I never would have thought that I might not know up from down but without gravity and light, I can’t tell what’s what. I’m terrified to pick a direction.

Bubbles brush by me and I have thoughts of horrible things coming at me from the watery depths of hell. All those half-lucid nights with Mom chanting away in the dark, painting images of demons dragging me into hell, come flooding back in the enormous coffin that is the sea. Are those dark shapes moving in the water or—?

Knock it off.

Air. Swim. Think.

No time to get sucked into a swirl of pointless drivel that isn’t going to help in any way.

Bubbles.

Something about the bubbles.

Don’t bubbles float up?

I put my hand to my mouth to feel the bubbles and let a precious bit of air out of my burning lungs. They tickle as they float across my face and past my ear.

I follow them sideways, or what feels like sideways. Water currents can drift bubbles in any direction but eventually, they go up, right? I certainly hope so.

I let out more bits of air, trying not to let out more than I need to, until the bubbles consistently touch my nose on their way up. I kick as hard as I can, following the bubbles as fast as my burning lungs can drive me.