Chapter 5

Istare up at the terrifying creature looming over me, and wince.

Not with pain, though that’s still crippling. But at what he said.

Yeah, I went there. I called myself Walter White to my clients.

So I really fangirl that show, so sue me.

But this angel will do far more than sue me. He’s arresting me. From what I hear about those the angels arrest… Oh, wait. I never hear anything.

No one ever hears about them again.

“Get up,” the angel orders, his fathomless voice a bass thrum of doom, enough to almost make my wavering consciousness blink out. “And don’t try anything. Resisting arrest will only aggravate your punishment.”

“I assure you, I’m in no condition to do anything—maybe ever again,” I mumble as I dimly realize there’s no trace of accent in his voice anymore. He’s gone full-on, upper-crust British.

I also realize I’m still wearing the warper when he growls, “Shut up, Mr. White. You won’t cite undue force during this arrest to weasel out of the charges being brought against you, or to garner any kind of mitigation.”

“Undue force? You destroyed half the street!” I wheeze, the pain in my back and tailbone dissipating under the advance of numbness. This may be paralysis in progress. “And you may have broken my back!”

His silhouetted head tilts, his lava eyes flaring a purplish, then bluish flame, before a sound of pure viciousness makes the rubble I’m half buried in rumble. “I regretfully didn’t.”

Did he just give me a scan? I never heard of Designated Angels having such abilities. And I thought I knew of all levels who exist on Earth, from the Cherubim to the Powers. But this one is clearly a kind of angel no one knows about. There’s no telling what he’s capable of.

Yet, in a twisted way, he’s managed to reassure me. About the future use of my legs.

“What now? You’ll rectify that oversight?”

Yes, moron. Give that hellish angel ideas. Why don’t you just lose consciousness?

His next words make me wish I already have. “There’s nothing I’d enjoy more than taking you apart, Mr. White. My torture techniques are renowned for making my quarries beg for eternal damnation—and preferring it once it’s granted. But we’ll get to that in good time. I currently need you intact. Now, on your feet.”

It’s only terror that makes me try to do as ordered. But the world spins around me in a vortex of darkness and despair, and I slump back again.

This is the end for me.

But this can’t be the end. I have to get back to Sarah. I can’t leave her alone.

“I may need you intact, but I can inflict pain until your disgusting body empties its filth. If you don’t want to experience agony you can’t imagine, you’ll stop stalling.”

“I’m not stalling, dude—I can’t get my legs to work. If you want me on my feet, you’ll have to pick me up.”

“I would never touch a human.”

The way he says human with such loathing gives me a sudden idea. To try to convince him he has the wrong person. And if this doesn’t work, to attempt getting off on a technicality. What I’m selling is an unknown drug. It isn’t even a drug, per se. No one else knows what it is or how it’s made. There can’t be any laws against its sale.

While this is a ridiculously long shot, I have to take it. I can’t give up and disappear wherever the angels send those they consider better off the streets. Or worse, becoming this monstrous angel’s next torture project.

It takes everything that dread and desperation haven’t eaten up inside me, but I finally sit up.

The moment I do, bile rises in my throat like magma. I barely tear the warper off before I pitch forward and throw up Sarah’s spice-laden stew.

All over the angel’s shiny, black boots.

The grunt of disgust that issues from him reverberates the destroyed sidewalk like an earthquake. It tells me if angels outright killed humans, I would have been street pizza underneath his sullied boot right now.

But with the churning in my stomach settling a bit, a nagging thought in the back of my shell-shocked mind crystalizes.

Isn’t this angel going against the Armistice Accords rules prohibiting destruction and endangerment of mortal property and lives?

He landed like a meteor in the middle of L.A., with the equivalent destructive force of one. He decimated a hundred-foot swath of sidewalk. He could have injured or killed any Regulars in the vicinity. He might have. I can’t hear emergency services or police sirens yet, but they must be on their way. Maybe even special forces, thinking there’s been a terrorist attack.

Once they arrive, I may be able to use their distraction to escape him.

A frantic look around later, that hope burns to ashes. No one within sight seems to notice anything out of the ordinary. It’s as if this angel is cloaking the scene of mayhem he’s caused in a layer of normalcy that no being can penetrate.

How is this even possible? I never heard of a Glamor or supernatural ability of that magnitude.

“Last chance, Mr. White. On. Your. Feet.”

All I want is to let the abyss of unconsciousness engulf me, but I can’t afford to disregard his ultimatum. With every nerve screaming in a jumble of pain and panic, I finally drag myself up to my feet.

Swaying, I squint up at him from beneath my hood. Way up. When I’m well over six feet in my elevator boots. How tall is this angel? Seven feet? More?

He has knocked down the street lights, and in the deep shadows of a moonless night, all I can see is his daunting outline. A massive body against the wings he’s folded high above him, making him look twelve feet tall. But now his eyes are no longer emitting this horrifying vermillion and death-laced electricity, all I can see of his face are hints of hard lines and chiseled planes. Far harsher and rugged than the usual angel fare.

From his “arresting” words, he’s authorized by the Celestial Court, the highest authority in Angeldom. It’s said to be populated by the most powerful angelic entities in existence. If anyone knows who, what they do, or where that court is, I’ve never heard about it. It’s yet another inscrutable heavenly secret. And this here is one of its stormtroopers.

Just my luck to be arrested by the Nazi of angels.

I have to find a way out of this. Maybe if I run away screaming, his Glamor will dissipate in the diversion. Once the Regulars whip out their phones, he may be forced to let me go…

Who am I kidding? This brute Glamored away the equivalent of a meta bomb’s detonation. He isn’t going to drop the ball now. And this isn’t even the usual visual Glamor. It messes with all the senses. No one heard his explosive landing, and now a couple of demons are walking over the debris without realizing it’s there.

But—maybe I can pretend I don’t realize what’s happening myself?

Mind racing with my new, and final idea I groan. “Are you my birthday surprise?”

My voice comes out a wisp of sound. And it’s like a freezing spell hits the massive angel towering over me.

I force myself to go on. “You’re pretending to arrest me before you start stripping? Angels do that now? No judgement, though. No shame in making a buck. Though I shudder to think how much someone like you charges. Or maybe my friends paid with… favors? Knowing them, I bet they made it worth your while.”

He still makes no reaction, nothing in him moving in the bitterly cold and humid wind, not a hair, not a feather.

I can do nothing but carry on. “Sorry for seeing through you, dude. But I’ll tell them I didn’t, that you scared the shit out of me. Which is actually the truth. Just don’t get so carried away next time. You’re supposed to entertain your targets, not hospitalize them.”

Running out of things to invent, I gulp down the heart trying to squeeze out of my throat, and push the suffocating hood off my head.

Absolute silence and stillness follows. As if he created a forcefield of cessation all around us.

Then he finally rumbles, “You’re female.”

“Congrats on reaching that conclusion.” I attempt a scoff. “Wait, you thought you were sent for a guy? Man, my friends really pranked us both, didn’t they? But don’t feel obliged to start stripping and gyrating now. I’ll tell them you performed your whole number, so they don’t ask for a refund if they paid you…”

My heart hits the base of my throat, forcing me to stop. A ray from a distant light pole struck off an unearthly emerald spark from one of his eyes. It’s even more incredible, and terrifying, than the previous lava and lightning.

He’s tilting his head again. Another scan, or is he considering I may be telling the truth?

Hope fizzes inside me as I fumble on, “I’ll remember this incident fondly—if this pain in my tailbone isn’t a fracture. So don’t go all-out method again, okay? Now, I gotta get going…”

His wings snap open so hard they release a hurricane-level wind, and a sonic boom.

I dimly think I don’t explode from the inside out only because he’s keeping me in that stasis field of his. Very efficient silencing technique, though.

After an indeterminate period, when his celestial flap leaves me deaf, blind and breathless, my senses zoom back to him saying, “…pretense will be added to your charges. You know exactly what I am.”

I almost burst out “I sure as hell don’t.” I never knew angels could do the things he does. But if he isn’t one, what is he?

I swallow the exclamation. Who cares what he is? Only getting away from him matters.

But playing clueless has backfired. All I have left is my previous plan. Playing another kind of oblivious.

“Can you blame me for trying? You scared the hell—er…the heaven out of me. It’s not every day an angel lands in front of me, destroying half the street, eyes spewing black lightning and spouting insane accusations. I had to try anything to get away from you.”

“I warned you about resisting arrest. You’re still doing it.”

“But I have no idea why you’re arresting me!”

My acting abilities are largely why I remain alive. I know I sound genuinely confused. Partially because I am. So will he buy it? Will it at least make him reconsider to any degree?

“You were using a voice warper,” he murmurs, as if to himself.

His quieter timbre is more hard-hitting. It releases bat-sized butterflies in my now empty stomach, and a molten sensation through my frozen marrow. It’s far from an unpleasant sensation.

Which is weird, sick even, given the circumstances.

Definitely fuel for fantasies. The unbridled kind. When I’m a thousand miles away from him.

“You’re dressed as a man. You ran when you heard I had eyes on you,” he continues, as if still thinking out loud.

His voice again strikes a chord I didn’t know existed within me. The brutal twang judders through me, body and soul.

I suppress a shiver as I smirk. “Last I heard, there were no laws, heavenly or otherwise, against any of that. Surely you can understand a girl needs all the protection she can get when she’s out late in this part of town? And I don’t understand what you mean you had eyes on me. You mean you saw me running? I was rushing to get home.”

“Enough.” His command isn’t loud or angry. Like all his orders so far, I realize. It’s more—weary. And if it still shakes every bone in my body, I’d hate to be around when he loses his temper. I don’t think I’d be around for much longer. “You’re the one who goes by the alias Walter White.”

This is a statement, certain and final. My act didn’t even scratch his diamond-hard conviction. I still open my mouth to object, and he raises a hand—a hand I’m sure can snap Kondar’s gnarled neck like a spaghetti stick. Or bring down a building with one punch.

“Don’t waste more of my time with protests of innocence. It will only—”

“Add to my charges,” I finish for him, the icy calm of resignation descending on me, putting out the fires of dread and agitation.

I’ve tried everything, and nothing worked. Nothing can work. I’m only delaying the inevitable, and making whatever it is worse.

He gives a nod. Despair must be the only reaction he expected from me. It satisfies him that he drove me to it. “Now that we’ve established your guilt…”

I stumble back, hands shooting up as if to ward off another barrage of sidewalk. “Whoa! Slow down, dude! You can’t go from charging me one second, to pronouncing me guilty the next! Where’s your due process? Where are the stages of prosecution? What about a jury of my peers? You didn’t even read me my rights, just that ridiculously theatrical arrest statement! Do you even consider I have rights?”

“No, I don’t. Yet I’m still granting you the right to breathe, so don’t test my forbearance. Before you slather me with more inane protestations, you’re guilty beyond a shadow of doubt. You just tried to sell me the substance you call Angelescence. If I deem to search you, I will find the merchandise on your person.”

Damn. He got me there. I didn’t have time to get rid of the damning evidence. I wouldn’t have, even if I did. Even to save myself, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to throw away the bottle.

I still try to extricate myself. “I’m reselling it. I know how in-demand it is, and I managed to swipe it from a coworker. I need the money…”

“What you need is to allow yourself some oxygen between the lies you breathe. We’ve been following your transactions, but you kept randomizing your procedure and evading us. I finally fathomed a method to your seeming madness, hacked into your latest sale, and replaced your client. We have extensive evidence on your operation, and the damage you caused.”

“What about the damage you caused a-a human street?” I blurt, needing to lash back at him, come what may. “Or the injuries you might have caused human pedestrians? When you didn’t hit your brakes to shock and awe me? Did it fill you with angelic testosterone when you struck a pose over a mere mortal like me, and basked in my pain and terror? You should be charged with reckless endangerment, destruction of public property and, yes, use of undue force during this arrest—and be found guilty of it all—and worse. Or do other rules apply to you? Heh, of course they do—you privileged dickwad!”

He says nothing in the aftermath of my outburst. The stillness deepens until I feel as if my very blood is stopping in my arteries.

Then he turns and strides away.

I gape after him.

He’s not cuffing me? He expects me to follow him?

But what else can I do? Run? I can’t outrun an angel.

Or… maybe I don’t need to. If I can duck into an alley, with his ridiculous wing-span, he can’t follow me in the air. With all this bulk, he can’t be swift on his feet, either. Whichever, it will slow him down…

Something yanks me by the neck, hard enough to almost snap it.

I launch in the air with the violent tug, before slamming to the ground with the same force. I barely miss pulverizing my face.

The unrelenting pull drags me over the jagged debris. But I don’t even feel the lacerations I’m sustaining. I have more pressing things to worry about.

Blood and breath clog in my head, starting to snuff out my consciousness. My life is next, if I don’t obey the pull, and lessen its pressure on my windpipe.

I scramble to my feet, stumbling repeatedly with the force. Then I see it. An eerily glowing line of indeterminate material, a golden substance that—feels like him, connecting my neck to his hand.

That winged bastard has me on a leash!

Out of pure instinct, I claw at the noose—and scream.

It burns.

Jerking my hands away, finding them already blistering, panic drenches me. This thing is going to eat through my neck.

He’s going to decapitate me!