World After Read online

Page 8

 

  “Get the hell away from me. ” Without his bat and his buddies backing him up, he looks like a regular-sized guy with less than regular courage.

  My mom jabs her prod at him, zapping it in the air.

  He jumps back, narrowly escaping. “You’re all goddamn crazy. ” He turns and runs.

  My mother runs after him as he scurries into a building.

  That dude is not going to have a good evening.

  I sheath my sword with hands trembling from the post-fight adrenaline. “Come on, Paige. Let’s go inside. ”

  Paige walks ahead of me. With her hood up, she looks like a docile little girl. But the couple under the awning isn’t fooled. They saw what happened and they stare at Paige with wide eyes, terrified. I wonder how many others are doing the same?

  I almost put my hand on her shoulder but can’t quite do it. I let my hand drop without touching her.

  We walk into our building with the weight of watching eyes on our backs.

  Chpater 12

  THAT NIGHT I have a bizarre dream.

  I’m in a village made of clay huts with thatched roofs. There’s a huge bonfire that lights up the night and everyone is eating, drinking, and running around in costumes. Music shrieks and people gyrate around the fire, throwing things into it.

  All the hallmarks of a festivity are here but the people are too alert. They steal glances behind themselves into the darkness, and there are only a few shrill laughs. The big bonfire throws long shadows against the hillside that shift and twist like sinister beings.

  Maybe I’m getting spooked because people are in monster costumes that are a little too organic for my taste. There’s no rubber and plastic to remind me that it’s just a costume. These people are wearing pelts, animal heads, and claws that look too real for comfort.

  Raffe is nearby in the shadows, standing tall with his snowy wings halfway open. It’s breathtaking to see his broad shoulders and muscular arms haloed by his own wings. It makes me sad to know that outside of this dream, he doesn’t have them anymore.

  The villagers look at him, especially when they walk by, but their glances are not shocked and fearful like I’d expect. They act as if they’re used to seeing angels and don’t pay him much attention. At least the men don’t.

  The women, on the other hand, are gathering around him. Somehow, I’m not too surprised.

  The women wear dark dresses that look like stage curtains. Their faces are made up with black circles around their eyes and bloody red lips. One has devils’ horns. Some have claws attached to their hands. Others wear goatskins complete with hooves and horns, and makeup to match.

  They look bizarrely barbaric, and the shifting light of the fire adds to their savage appearance. Despite his wings, Raffe is the only one who looks “normal. ”

  Weirdly, my dream mind picks up on some of Raffe’s thoughts. I see humans the way he sees them, alien and bestial. Compared to the perfection of angels, these Daughters of Men are ugly and smell like pigs. He tries to imagine what his Watchers could possibly have seen in them. He can’t see anything worth risking a minor reprimand for, much less the Pit.

  Even if he could get past their looks and behavior, they’re wingless. How could his angels stomach that?

  “Where are our husbands?” asks one of the women. She speaks a guttural language I wouldn’t normally understand except that, in my dream, I do.

  “They’ve been condemned to the Pit for marrying Daughters of Men. ” His voice is controlled but there’s an undertone of anger. They had been his best warriors and good friends.

  The women begin crying. “For how long?”

  “Until Judgment Day when they’ll finally get their trial. You won’t see them again. ”

  The women cry in each other’s arms.

  “What about our children?”

  Raffe stays silent. How does one tell a mother that he’s here to hunt and kill her babies? He came to earth to spare his Watchers the pain of having to hunt down their own children. Even if they were nephilim—monsters who eat human flesh—what kind of twisted punishment is that for a father? He couldn’t allow it, not for his soldiers.

  “Are you here to punish us?”

  “I’m here to protect you. ” He wasn’t planning to protect the wives. But the Watchers begged him. Begged. He couldn’t fathom the idea of his fiercest warriors begging for anything, much less for Daughters of Men.

  “From what?”

  “The Watchers’ wives have been given to the hellions. They’ll be coming for you tonight. We need to get you someplace safe. Let’s go. ”

  I look around at all the costumes and the bonfire and realize that this must be some ancient version of Halloween when monsters and demons supposedly roamed the streets. They’ll be coming in force tonight.

  The women clutch at each other in fright.

  “I told you to stay out of the business of gods and angels,” says a gray-haired woman who holds a younger woman protectively. She’s dressed in a lamb’s skin, complete with the head that drapes over her forehead. It has fangs attached to it like some kind of saber-toothed beast.

  Raffe begins walking away from the village. “Either come with me or stay. I can only help those who want to be helped. ”

  The older woman pushes her daughter toward Raffe. The others follow, huddling together and rushing to keep up like some weird menagerie.

  Music builds near the bonfire as we walk away from it. The tempo speeds up and the beat throbs until the women’s breathing matches it.

  Just as I think the crescendo will crest, the music stops.

  A baby cries into the night.

  Then it suddenly stops in the middle of a wail. It ends too abruptly to be natural, and the sharp silence makes the hair on my arms curl.

  A woman cries out brokenheartedly. There’s no surprise to it, just pain and mourning.

  It makes me want to both run to the fire to see if the baby is all right and to run away from these barbaric villagers. They seem mostly unsurprised and unaffected by whatever is happening near the fire, as if this is part of their normal ritual.

  I want to tell Raffe that we’re not all like these people. That I’m not like these people. But I’m just a ghost in my own dream.

  Raffe quietly pulls out his sword, on full alert.

  They’re coming.

  Just as the music begins again, this time accompanied by chanting, Raffe spins to look behind him.

  The hillside slithers with shadows.

  Chpater 13

  CROUCHED AND LOPING. Stunted black wings. The shapes of emaciated men.

  I don’t know what they are, but my primal brain recognizes them, because even in my dream, my heart speeds up and my instincts whisper run, run, run.

  The shadows leap toward us.

  Two of them land on a woman, knocking her down. They claw at her. She begs Raffe with her terrified eyes.

  One of his warriors loved this Daughter of Man. Gave up his whole life for her. Worried over her even as he was being condemned to the Pit. The why of it is beyond Raffe’s comprehension, but that doesn’t stop his compassion from blooming.

  Raffe kicks off a hellion that lands on him and swings his sword at the demons attacking the woman.

  Then a strange thing happens.

  Strange even for this dream.

  Raffe goes into slow motion.

  And so does everything else—except for me.

  I’ve never had a slow-mo dream before. I can see almost every muscle as Raffe shifts his sword and cuts into the hellions that are clawing at the fallen woman.

  As one screeches its death cry, I get a decent look. It has a bat-like face, squished and wrinkled, with sharp fangs. Pretty damn ugly if you ask me.

  I’m about to put up my hand instinctively to block the slow-mo blood coming my way, when I realize that Raffe’s sword is also in my h
ands even though he is already using it.

  Every detail of Raffe slicing the demons as they attack is clear. In slow motion, I can absorb his stance, the shifting of his weight, the way he holds the sword.

  When he cuts a swath through the wave of monsters, that part of the dream stops. Then the sequence repeats.

  This is like an instructional video of the organic kind.

  I must have been seriously frustrated by my lack of sword-fighting skills to make all this up. My dream head hurts just thinking about it.

  I put my sword up, mimicking Raffe’s stance. Why not? He is a master swordsman, and it’s possible that my subconscious picked up details when I saw him fight in real life that my waking brain didn’t. I try to swing, mimicking Raffe. But I must be doing it wrong because his swing repeats.

  I try it again. Raffe completes his swing, rolls the sword, and swings back to complete a figure eight.

  I do the same.

  Slice to the left, swing up and around, slice to the right and back up and around. He does this a couple of times and then switches his tactic and stabs. Probably not a bad idea to make sure your moves aren’t predictable.

  The sword adjusts itself here and there to improve my technique. It practically works itself, letting me concentrate on Raffe’s footwork. I’ve learned through years in various self-defense training that footwork is as important as what the arms and hands do.

  He glides forward and back like a dancer, never crossing his feet. I mimic his dance.

  Sinewy arms burst through the ground, spraying slow-motion dirt everywhere to grab the women. They pull themselves out of the soil, tearing up the earth and spitting it out of their mouths as they climb up.

  Some of the women panic and run into the night.

  “Stay with me!” Raffe yells.

  But it’s too late. The hellions pounce on them and their screams intensify.

  Raffe grabs the nearest woman as she’s being pulled into the ground by demonic hands. The sharp claws hook onto her flesh as she thrashes in slow-motion panic.

  Raffe pulls her up out of the dirt, simultaneously swinging his sword while cutting and kicking at the monsters.

  This is the way a hero fights.

  I copy him, motion by motion, wishing I could help.

  We fight, Raffe and I, all through the night.

  I WAKE up trembling in the dark in that quiet time before sunrise. This dream was so vivid that it’s as if I was physically there. It takes a few minutes before my heart rate slows back to normal and my adrenaline dissipates.

  I shift so my sword’s cross-guard isn’t poking into my ribs under the blanket. I lie listening to the wind, wondering where Raffe is now.

  Chpater 14

  SHE HASN’T eaten in three days.

  My sister has drunk some water but that’s about all she’s managed to hold down. Mom and I coaxed her into swallowing a couple of spoonfuls of venison stew but she gagged that right up. We’ve tried everything from broth to vegetables. She can’t hold any of it down.