I worry about my mom diving as well, but she seems to have no shortage of volunteers waiting for her command. The woman has a job to do in the middle of all this battle, and she doesn’t look like she’s about to abandon it.
Hopefully, her job will keep her from obsessing over what’s happening with Paige. As worried as I am, I know that if my sister weren’t fighting to win over the locusts, they’d be attacking us right now along with the angels.
We’re doing way better than I imagined, and I’m beginning to let myself believe that we might have a shot at winning this battle. I can almost hear the people cheering in my imagination when I see the sky darken with more angels.
It’s a new wave of them. And it’s a much larger group than the one that’s already here.
On the way toward us, some of the angels swing low over the water, capsizing boats and giving their drenched and wounded comrades a hand. The winged warriors in the bay climb onto the capsized boats as the humans frantically swim away. They cling on awkwardly like drowning hawks, shaking their wings out and spraying the bloody water off them.
The gunners follow the new angels with streams of bullets. Angels continue to get shot out of the sky and into the shark-infested bay, but the new group hovers out of reach like spectators. They see what’s happening with their fellow warriors, and they stay back.
I’m wondering what they’ll do next when I notice that the angels are split into three groups. The first is the one that came right after the locusts. I catch glimpses of Uriel shouting in that group. The second is the mass of wings hovering at a higher altitude than Uriel’s group. I can almost feel their cold eyes glaring down at us, watching and judging.
Then there’s the smallest group. Their wings are dark and tattered. They could hardly be called angels. A white-winged Adonis swoops across them.
It’s Raffe with his Watchers.
If one group is Uriel’s and the other is Raffe’s, then who are the others? Are they spectators here to watch the blood hunt?
It hits me that the real battle is only just beginning.
Even if Uriel wanted to back off and try again another time, he can’t now, not without everyone in the host knowing that he backed down. What kind of blood hunter would he be?
Uriel and his angels must realize it at the same time I do, because they suddenly dive-bomb us.
The music is still blaring. The closer they get, the louder it is for them, but they commit to their attack.
The lights turn off, pitching us into the dark.
I feel the makeshift stage thunking with the weight of bodies landing hard around me.
The lights turn back on.
Around me are three angel warriors. They leap up, punching blindly as they spin in place with their eyes shut. They can’t see, and the noise must be pounding their heads into mush, yet they’re ready to fight.
Angels land all over the bridge. Some are crashing, lying broken on the concrete. Enough of them make it, though – uninjured enough to kill the nearest human even as they’re adjusting to the light and recovering from their impact.
A bloody fight erupts on the bridge. People everywhere are running or fighting. The gunners aren’t sure what to do, and they stutter in their aim. They can’t open fire on the bridge without hitting our own people, and the angels above us are mostly out of easy range.
The angels don’t even pull out their weapons. Either they’re worried about my little trick with the sword I no longer have or they’re so confident that they don’t bother with weapons.
We can’t beat angels one-on-one. We had anticipated the ground crew having to fight some angels who landed or fell onto the bridge, but not the entire angel host. That was as far as our planning skills and time allowed.
People are getting slaughtered as angels punch our fighters off the bridge or break their backs or kick them into oblivion. People use their handguns or rifles to shoot at the angels despite the risk of hitting other people.
I raise my knife against an angel who heads my way. It feels really flimsy compared with the sword I used to have. I don’t know if he can see me now or not, but he has murder in his eyes. He knows he’s going to kill. It’s just a question of who.
If I’m super lucky, I might be able to fight him off and maybe even the warrior after him, but it’s not a long-term survival strategy. By long-term, I mean the next ten minutes.
We’re screwed.
63
Knowing we signed up for this doesn’t help even if we all knew our chances of survival were close to zero. Actually being faced with death is totally different.
My hands are trembling and clumsy as I brace for a fight. I try to calm down so I can fight effectively, but adrenaline screams through my veins, making me jittery.
As I calculate my best options, I see motion out of the edge of my vision. Another angel has snuck up on me. His wings are golden and his face chiseled, but he looks at me with the cold eyes of a killer.
Before I can figure out what to do, snowy wings blot out the angel.
It’s Raffe.