Natural Born Angel (28 page)

I
n the sudden rush of adrenaline, extending her wings didn’t hurt nearly as much as it had prior times. The oblong wings reached out, then crouched in towards her body, coiled, ready. Their purplish luminescence pulsed with the rush. Even now they felt like before, like something attached to her body, instead of entirely part of it. Like wearing a very large backpack that, impossibly, seemed to weigh almost nothing.

People in the sculpture garden were speechless, their mouths open in shock.

Maddy crouched, leaning slightly forward as she had been trained. She made a move as if to jump straight up into the air. As she did, she felt the wings flex, with a tremendous
whoosh
of air that blew back her ponytail and whipped her loose hair around her face. She felt her shoes leave the ground. When she looked down, she saw the museum receding until it was no more than a toy box, the cars winking sunlight up at her. Her necklace snapped wildly around her neck. Her heart hammered relentlessly in her chest, and she fought to breathe against the rush of the air as her wings pushed her into the unblemished sky.

Less than graceful, she levelled off and beat her wings furiously against the sky. Below, the world looked suddenly calm and silent. The only sound was the rush of air in her ears. She thought of her training with Tom. It was all for this.

Within a minute, the beach came into view, with the Angel mansions crowded against it. The impressive homes seemed small now, like mere toys. The sunbathers and volleyball players were now as small and insignificant as ants.

The black cruciform of her Angelic shadow flew along the sand of the beach, and in seconds, Maddy was soaring over the Pacific Ocean. She swept her wings back, picking up as much speed as she could with her wings, and squinted into the distance. She could see nothing but brilliant, untarnished blue. It was even hard to tell where the sky ended and the ocean began. Her eyes darted wildly along the horizon, burning in the brilliant glare of the sun, scouring the distance for something, anything.

Then she saw it.

The Gulfstream G4, inbound to the Santa Monica Airport. A plane, Maddy knew, that would soon be at the bottom of the ocean.

Suddenly the private jet banked wildly and climbed, all at once, for a brief moment before stalling into a nosedive. The plane was spinning as it descended, and Maddy had to dive directly down to catch up with it. Her hair tie was long gone. Her hair lashed at her face now, but she didn’t have time to bother with it. It was all happening so fast.

Her shoes touched the metal of the wing, but the plane was spinning, and the wing turned over and over before she realized what was happening. Maddy clutched the wingtip, her wings flailing to regain control of herself. She felt strength she’d never imagined coursing through her veins, every fibre of her being turning to Angel instinct.

Black smoke began pouring from one of the engines. She’d have to move fast.

Inside, oil billionaire Jeffery Rosenberg was already passed out in the cockpit, his body hunched over the wheel, causing the plane to spin wildly out of control. Maddy grabbed the handle on the cabin door and tore at it with all her strength. The exertion sent pain searing through her arms, but the door ripped free of its hinges with a groan and in an instant was gone into the clear blue sky.

Wow.
Maddy had of course been taught about the increase in strength and ability during a save, but since an Angel only experiences it during a real save situation, there had been no way to train for it except through simulation. She was surprised that it was both easier and much more difficult than the computer simulations.

Hooking her feet and hands around the door frame, Maddy thrust herself inside the cabin of the jet with a single, powerful burst of strength. Another hot dagger of pain raced down her back as her wings banged against the top of the door frame.

I left my wings out.
She retracted the throbbing wings and looked around, holding on to anything she could in the depressurized cabin. Wind violently smacked at her face. Debris of every kind was tearing loose from the cabin’s interior and rocketing past Maddy’s head. She made her way up the aisle and reached the flight deck in one swift move.

Maddy discovered Rosenberg in the cockpit, slumped out of his chair and hanging by his seat belt like a morbid marionette, his face a mask of pain. He appeared to have put on at least fifteen pounds since Maddy had met with him just after her Commissioning, which almost seemed impossible.

His lifestyle was going to kill him sooner than he’d thought.

I didn’t want one that’s half.

She remembered the man’s words, spoken arrogantly and with a wave of his hand, as he answered emails on his smartphone.

Now the words rang in Maddy’s ear as she snapped the seat belt with her bare hands and pulled Rosenberg’s prodigious mass out of the chair. She glanced out of the window and saw the white caps of Santa Monica Bay rushing up at them. She had six seconds at most. Maybe less. Threading her hands under the man’s arms, Maddy dragged him down the aisle and towards the cabin door as the air frame spun and shook uncontrollably around them. She glanced out of another window and saw only churning ocean.

Three seconds.

Then Maddy saw her, crouched against the seat, her eyes a blaze of terror: it was Rosenberg’s assistant. The one Maddy had met as well.

The girl was going to die.

Before she knew what was happening, Maddy had freed one hand and extended it forward inside the cabin.

She cried out in terrible pain, using every fibre of her Angel being. She didn’t know if she’d be able to do it. Time manipulation had never been her strong suit, after all.

Suddenly the water outside the jet, merely fifteen metres away, stopped. The jet didn’t get any closer. The whitecaps froze in place; droplets of seawater splashed up and froze just above the ocean surface. Maddy grunted in concentration, her body shaking and convulsing as she attempted to maintain the local time bend using the technique Susan had taught her. She was doing it!

In a moment Maddy was by the girl’s side, scooping the terrorized assistant up from the floor and over her shoulder. Then, as if in a flash, she was at the door with both Rosenberg and his assistant. The local time bend was starting to shimmer and shudder as Maddy lost concentration.

Come on, just two more seconds, come on, come on.

With an audible growl, Maddy shoved Rosenberg through the gaping cabin door and on to the wing. She jerked the assistant out of the door and gathered the girl under her arm.

Maddy paused only a moment to look at the fast-approaching water as her local time bend began to dissipate. The waves suddenly began rolling across the ocean, the screaming of the diving jet taking over all sound as they careened to doom. A feeling bloomed in Maddy’s stomach that she hadn’t yet felt during the save. It crept up through her chest and sat tingling in the back of her throat.

Fear.
Maddy crouched, exploded off the wing, and rocketed directly skyward as the Gulfstream slammed into the Pacific Ocean. The impact ignited the fuel tank, incinerating the plane as it twisted and shattered with a terrible metal shriek. Maddy glided back towards the coast, Rosenberg still over her shoulder, the girl under her arm. A single thought echoed in Maddy Montgomery Godright’s mind as she touched down on the Santa Monica Pier.

That was close.

*

Rosenberg regained consciousness lying comfortably on a stretcher, paramedics tending to him, tourists and onlookers crowding around. He squinted up at Maddy, the pier’s Ferris wheel spinning in the background behind him.

“You gave us a scare,” Maddy said.

The man looked all around, struggling to put the fragmented pieces of his memory together. “What happ— Who are you?” Then he gazed into Maddy’s face again, and recognition flashed across his eyes.

“My God. It’s you.”

Maddy smiled. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“No, I just . . . I just never thought it would happen to me.”

“No one does. It was a heart attack. Minor. You’re going to be fine. My Archangel will be contacting you tomorrow to debrief you. Until then, rest easy. They’ve contacted your family to let them know you’re OK.”

Rosenberg’s face turned ashen. “Lauren,” he said gravely. “I . . . I killed her. She was on the plane.”

Maddy nodded to their right. Rosenberg looked over and saw his assistant, sitting, covered in a blanket and talking to a Santa Monica paramedic.

“Lauren?” he said, confused. “You’re alive?”

He looked at Maddy.

“How. . . ?”

An ambiguous look crossed Maddy’s face. “I just had to,” she said. “What’s . . . done is done. It can’t be changed now.”

Maddy’s mind spun dizzily as she realized she’d just made an illegal save.

The onlookers had grown to an excited crowd. Dozens of mobile phone cameras clicked, capturing Maddy
post-save.
Fans screamed as the cameras snapped. A team of Santa Monica police arrived and did their best to hold the crowd back.

“Maddy’s first save! Maddy’s first save!” some of the onlookers shouted, taking more pictures, unable to believe their good luck in witnessing the historic occasion.

The photos were doubtlessly already being picked up by blogs and news outlets around the world. A strange, inevitable panic entered Maddy. They were taking pictures of Maddy with her Protection, Jeffrey Rosenberg. And his assistant, Lauren. Not her Protection. An illegal save.

“You know what my last thought was?” Rosenberg stammered, his mind reeling with the memory. “I remember thinking,
This is it. This is how I die.
”

The man had tears in his eyes.

“You saved my life . . . and Lauren’s.”

“Yes, I did,” Maddy said, surprised at the emotion coming out of Rosenberg. She’d read his frequency the moment he came into the conference room at the NAS, and she hadn’t felt this.

The hot liquid spilled from his eyes, running down his ample cheeks.

Maddy walked over to Rosenberg’s assistant.

“How are you?” Maddy asked awkwardly. Lauren looked at her with wide eyes. She was still shaking. The girl knew she should be dead.

“I – I didn’t have protection,” Lauren stammered. “How did you save me?”

Maddy felt her face screw into an inscrutable mask. Hot tears rushed up towards her eyes. She turned away, looking off the end of the pier to the shimmering blue ocean, which would have been Lauren’s unmarked watery grave, her body trapped in the twisted and incinerated jet. Maddy remained silent.

“God bless you,” Lauren said, weeping.

Maddy looked over at Lauren, and then to Rosenberg. “God already did.”

The crowd was getting more boisterous as word spread that Maddy was on the pier with her first saves. More pictures, more tweets, more Facebook updates – and inevitably more questions about how she saved someone who wasn’t a Protection. “But I need to go now.”

Applause rose from the crowd. A woman in the front row dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, and a man next to her gave Maddy a hearty thumbs-up. Maddy deployed her wings and, to the thrill of her audience, rocketed elegantly and effortlessly into the cloudless sky.

Soon the pier floated away underneath her, becoming smaller and smaller, set against the vast blue of the ocean.

Wings spread and taut, Maddy soared back towards Angel City. A cool breeze had picked up, and she floated along the slipstream. Maddy tried to take a deep breath of the cool air. The true enormity of what she had done started to hit her. An
unsanctioned save
. A numb terror crept into her bones as she thought about the Angel Disciplinary Council Agents in their black uniforms, ruthless in their pursuit. They’d be after her, and they would cut off her wings. There seemed to be no way she’d be able to escape them. Maddy figured that if the Angel Disciplinary Council were going to come for her, she may as well make it easy for them by flying. They could have her within seconds if they wanted to. She wouldn’t stand a chance. Soon she was over Beverly Hills and could see the enormous black shiny box that was the NAS headquarters.

As she flew ever closer to Angel City proper, Maddy’s body began shaking. An unsanctioned save. Punishable by wing removal. And mortalization. Though Maddy figured she probably wasn’t Immortal anyway, being only half-Angel.
Funny
, she thought semi-hysterically,
that was one question that hadn’t been addressed in training
.

Her wings.

Maddy realized how much she’d actually come to love them, how they really had become part of her. Part of her full identity. For the first time in her life she’d really felt complete, she realized. Her mind cast back to the terrible nightmare of them being monstrous and deformed, and instead how beautiful and perfect they really were when they finally emerged.

And now her wings were going to be taken away in a merciless disciplinary action.

With a shudder, she wondered how badly it would hurt.