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Jacks’s wild eyes were on Maddy, but he didn’t move. He waited for her decision. Maddy looked in Kevin’s eyes. Something in them didn’t want her to go, but begged her to all the same.
“Okay,” Maddy said, turning to Jacks. “Let’s go.”
She felt his heavy arm scoop her up and had only a moment to dig her nails into his skin before they were torn skyward. They shot through the jagged opening of the window, Jacks’s wings thrashing the air, and climbed into the foggy night.
The wet rushing air burned against Maddy’s face. Compared to now, the first time they had gone flying had been a leisurely stroll. Now they rocketed through the night, ferociously, painfully. Angel City receded below them until it was nothing more than an indistinct glow. The night fog enveloped them.
The muscles of Jacks’s back rose and fell with the exertion of his wings. Maddy looked back through the lashing air. She saw nothing at first, just the fog and inky black night. Then the unmistakable outline of Angel wings emerged. Three dark shapes were coming toward them in the dark, their yellow eyes glowing like banshees’.
“There are three of them!” she yelled over the rush of the wind. Slowly, surely, the pursuing Angels seemed to be nearing. Maddy watched helplessly as they began to close the gap.
Then, through a break in the fog, she spotted it. The Los Angeles skyline. In the foggy night the twinkling buildings hovered like ocean liners on a sea of mist. When Jacks spoke again, his voice was little more than a whisper in the wind.
“Listen. This will probably be the worst pain you have ever experienced in your life. Everything in your body will tell you to let go, but you have to hold on. You have to hold on, Maddy, no matter what. No matter how badly it hurts. You can never, never let go. Can you do that for me?”
Maddy nodded. She crossed her arms around his neck and gripped her elbows with as much strength as her hands would bring to bear. Jacks wrapped his arms around her arms, pulling them so tightly around his body she winced. Banking steeply, they soared toward the towers of glass.
The Angels behind them had gained. Maddy didn’t need to look back. She could hear the hiss of the wind over their wings. Jacks rushed forward with disorienting speed. She watched as a towering building emerged from the fog like a ghost. It quickly eclipsed her vision, a wall of glass rushing eagerly to greet them. Jacks didn’t change course. He didn’t slow down. Maddy felt a primal panic well up inside her. She watched the wall approach until she could see her reflection in it. The raw terror overpowered her rational thinking, and she screamed. In that exact instant, Jacks buckled at the waist, pumped his wings, and wrenched Maddy straight down.
They dove. Viciously. The thrust nearly tore her off Jacks’s back. It was like the first big drop of a roller coaster—except excruciating instead of fun. Every cell of her body screamed at her to let go. Pleaded. The tearing sensation in her arms and fingers was overwhelming. Blood drained from her head.
They
flew directly down the tower’s surface, so close she could touch it, so fast it appeared as a single, unbroken sheet of glass. A strange popping noise filled her ears, and she realized the windows were exploding as they passed. A wave of shattering glass pursued them as they rushed toward the fast-approaching ground.
Maddy’s eyes opened in agonized slits and she saw the street. It was like death itself rushing up at her. Then, with impossible precision, Jacks leveled and shot straight forward over the ground. Streetlights, signs, cars: all flew by at deadly speeds, missing them by inches.
The acceleration bled away and Maddy found she could breathe again. She looked back. Sure enough, the first Angel had been pulled into Jacks’ trap. He was not as nimble—or as strong—as Jacks, and as he leveled, his wing caught on a streetlamp, sending him tumbling over the pavement and taking several parked cars with him.
One down, she thought.
“Are you okay?” Jacks’s voice was strained with exertion.
“Yes,” Maddy gasped. She hazarded another look behind her.
“There’s two now!” she shrieked.
“Hang on.”
Zigzagging through the jungle of downtown, Jacks banked hard and low. Maddy looked up at a gaping concrete mouth. They were going into a tunnel. She heard the snap of air as one of the Angel agents swooped in right behind them.
The tunnel was bathed in an eerie blue-green. Headlights reflected off the tunnel’s glossy ceiling, giving it a cold, futuristic feel. Up ahead Maddy could see a row of orange lights coming right at them. She heard the blare of the semitruck’s horn. The sound seemed to come from everywhere all at once. Jacks put on more speed. The big rig bore down on them, filling the claustrophobic tunnel, its trailer only a few feet from the tunnel’s ceiling. Maddy realized with sickening certainty they were going up over the top. They would have to squeeze through the tiny gap between the top of the truck’s trailer and the ceiling of the tunnel.
“Do you trust me?” Jacks yelled. Maddy pressed her lips against his ear.
“Yes!”
In an instant, Jacks rolled so they were flying flat against the ceiling. Maddy pressed her body against Jacks’s chest, knowing that if she moved, she would be killed. They slipped over the top of the truck, instant death mere inches away. Maddy felt, more than heard, the impact behind them as the agent collided with the semi. The shock of the Angel’s body against the windshield clapped her ears like a bomb.
Jacks rolled level as they soared over the tops of the cars behind the semi. They approached the end of the tunnel, the damp night air getting closer.
Two down.
Maddy looked back. Nothing.
“I don’t see anyone!”
“What?!” Jacks yelled.
