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“Hi,” said Jacks gently.
“Hi.”
“How is he?”
“Sleeping again,” Maddy said.
“He’ll be all right,” Jacks said. “He’s stubborn. Like you.”
“I just wanted to . . . thank you,” Maddy said. “I don’t know when Tom will be able to himself, and—”
Jacks interrupted her. “You don’t need to get into it,” he said. “I was just doing my duty.”
“How are your Angels?” Maddy asked.
“We lost five, and four are injured,” Jacks said. “That leaves thirty-one of us. We’re going to do our best.”
“Five,” Maddy said almost under her breath, shaking her head. And it wasn’t even a full attack.
“We need to slow the demons down, even more than we already have. I’d like to give Linden time to set up defenses across the country. The longer we keep them from totally overrunning Angel City, the better chance he has of slowing them before they take over the next city. And the more chance Detective Sylvester has of finding out how to get to the head demon.” He looked back toward the land. “Angel City won’t last long. But the resistance can. There has to be a way to stop the demons before they take everything.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Maddy said. “Sylvester and Susan said that if we could find and kill the head demon, we could stop the assault. Without their leader, their forces would fall apart.” Maddy looked out across the sea again and thought of all the people still left in the city. Including her uncle Kevin. They needed hope, now more than ever. “We need to find it, Jacks. For the city. For everyone.”
Jacks nodded. “It would. I do believe what Sylvester says, Maddy,” Jackson said. “But we need to find out how to get to it first. And we won’t know if there’s enough time. I’m sending a couple of my Angels to Linden right now, even though we really can’t spare anyone. If we fail, Sylvester and Archson, along with those Angels, will have to keep the resistance alive as the demons move forward. Maybe they can figure out how to get at the leader of the demons in time to save other cities, other nations, before the Darkness falls on everyone.”
“You’re not going to fail,” Maddy said. “We’re going to find the leader. And we’re going to bring it down, Jacks.”
Jacks looked at her, a brave smile on his worried face. “You’re right, Maddy. We have to find it. It’s our only hope,” he said. “But, Maddy, there are just so many of them. So, so many. For every one demon we were getting, there were four more coming to take its place. The harder we fought . . .” He just shook his head, chasing away his pessimism.
Maddy recalled her recurring nightmare. More and more Dark Angels were plaguing her dream; now there were dozens tormenting her.
“We’re going to do it,” Maddy said. “We have to. Even if . . . we don’t make it. We have to stop them.”
Jacks squeezed her hand in his and looked out toward the boundless ocean, which held the awaiting army of Dark Ones.
“No matter what happens, we’ll take as many of them with us as we can,” Jacks said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Gasping, as if emerging from underwater, Maddy sat up in her bed. She was covering her ears with her hands and rocked back and forth. The demons. They’d been screaming. Everywhere. There’d been no escape.
It was dark all around, and she struggled to remember where she was. The T-shirt she wore to sleep was drenched in cold sweat. Slowly, gradually, the details came back to her: she was on the Ford-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Pacific Ocean, in her cabin.
Maddy’s heart kept pounding, and the sweat from the terror of her dream did not dry.
Because she realized it was no dream. It did not fade with waking.
It was a vision.
The light clicked on, revealing Maddy’s face, gaunt and haunted. As quickly as she could, she stumbled into a pair of sweats and a jacket so she wouldn’t freeze up on deck.
“Lieutenant Commander.” A seaman up above saluted as she walked by. But Maddy didn’t pay any attention. She was focused on one thing and one thing only.
She looked out toward the sinkhole, and then spun around and gazed into the distance, back toward the shore and Angel City.
“Binoculars!” she shouted to no one in particular, but soon somebody on deck was handing her a pair. She took them and looked toward the Santa Monica beach.
The dark sky above Angel City appeared to be trembling, and veins of fire spread across the clouds.
