I hear the sound of sirens in the distance.
“Give. Us. The baby.” Olivia is close enough now that she could easily stab me. She lifts the dagger.
“Go. To. Hell,” I say between clenched teeth. Maybe there is some fire left in me, after all.
Lift Web up over your head! Now! Christian shouts in my mind, and I don’t think, I just do as he asks, I lift the baby, and Christian leaps up from the orchestra pit onto the stage, and his glory sword is a blinding spray of light as it passes through me from shoulder to hip. I can feel it slicing through my clothes, but when it touches my skin, there’s only warmth.
“No!” someone calls out.
Dazed, I lower Web back to my shoulder, and that’s when I see Lucy—the one with the bracelets—standing a few feet away, her face a mask of rage and disbelief, screaming in this ragged, animal-like agony.
And Olivia falls at my feet, dead.
Cut almost in half by Christian’s glory sword.
“I will kill you!” Lucy screams, staring at me with bulging, grief-filled eyes, the black dagger clutched in her fist.
But Christian is with me now, beside me, sword in hand, and the sirens are getting closer. Any minute and this place will be crawling with firefighters.
Lucy glances toward the exit. “I swear I will kill you, Clara Gardner.” A tear makes its way down her face, dangling on her chin for a few seconds before it drops. “And I’ll make sure you suffer first,” she says, then turns and runs up the aisle of the theater, bursting through the smoke and flame and out onto the street.
I can hear her sobbing as she runs.
I don’t look at Olivia. I can’t. I turn away, bile rising in my throat as I realize that I’m covered in her blood, my shirt soaked with it, my shoulders and arms splattered.
I used to think of this place as being so safe, I think. A place for all of us to talk and be ourselves. A magic place.
Now it’s burning down around us. It’s gone.
Angela is gone.
Slowly I become aware of Christian standing in front of me, panting, pressing his shirt to his ribs.
“Are you okay?” he asks, squeezing my shoulder. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” I answer to both questions, then see that he’s bleeding. “You’re cut.”
“I’ll survive,” he says. At the same moment, we hear shouted voices in the lobby. “We have to get out of here. Now.”
We hurry toward the back exit and into the alley behind the theater. Cool night air hits my skin, my lungs, and I can breathe again.
“We have to fly,” Christian says. He unfolds his wings, the black speckles standing out on his white feathers like ink spilled on paper in the dark.
My heart is so heavy with dread and shock, with sadness for Anna, with fear for Angela, with Olivia’s death, that I know flight isn’t possible. I shake my head at Christian. “I can’t.”
He looks down at the ground for a minute, thinking, then nods solemnly and retracts his wings. “Okay. We’ll circle around and get my truck. It’s a better plan, anyway. All right?”
I nod.
“You’ve got him?” Christian asks.
I gaze down into Web’s round little face. He looks up at me with wide amber eyes. Angela’s eyes. He coughs. I pull him tighter to me.
“I’ve got him,” I say, and then we’re running, running, through the smoky streets of Jackson.
Christian’s hand trembles as he puts the keys in the ignition. Then his jaw tightens and the truck rumbles to life and we peel away from the curb. Neither of us says anything for a while, the only sound the gunning of the engine. I want to tell him that he’s driving too fast, that the last thing we need is to get pulled over, what with us all bloody and a baby in the front seat, but I don’t have the heart. He’s doing the best he can.