The angel's lab coat is soaked in blood Around him lie chunks of quivering meat, like bits of liver torn and tossed on the floor.
A chunk of flesh has been ripped out of his cheek.
He’s thrashing so much he looks like he's in the throes of a very bad nightmare. Maybe he is. Maybe I am too.
Paige hunches over him. Her little hands grip his shirt to get a better hold on his trembling body. Her hair and clothes are splattered in blood. Her face drips with it.
Her mouth opens, showing rows of shiny teeth. At first, I think that someone has grafted long braces onto her teeth. But they’re not braces.
They’re razors.
She bites into the angel's throat. Worries it like a dog with a chew toy. Pulls back from the gushing torn flesh.
She spits out a chunk of bloody meat. It lands with a wet thunk on the floor next to the other bits of flesh.
She spits and gags. She is revolted, although it’s hard to tell if the revulsion is from her actions or from the taste. An unwanted memory of the way the low demons spat after biting into Raffe barges into my head.
They weren’t meant to eat angel flesh. The thought slips through the cracks in my mind and I instantly shove it back.
The delivery guy retches again, and my stomach churns, wanting to join him. Paige opens her mouth again in animal ferocity, ready to dive back into the quivering flesh.
“Paige!” My voice comes out thin and panicked, the end rising as though in question.
The girl who used to be my sister stops midway down to the dying angel and looks at me.
Her eyes are the wide baby brown of innocence. Drops of blood hang suspended from her long lashes. She looks at me, attentive and docile as she's always been. There is no pride in her expression, no viciousness, no hunger, no horror at her actions. She looks up at me as though I had called her name while she was eating a bowl of cereal.
My throat is raw from the strangling, and I keep swallowing back a cough, which is handy because I need to swallow back my dinner too. The puking sounds the delivery guy makes aren’t helping.
Paige unfolds away from the angel. She stands up on her own feet, without leaning against anything.
Then she takes two graceful, miraculous steps toward me.
She stops, as though remembering she was crippled.
I don’t dare to breathe. I stare at her, resisting the urge to run up and catch her in case she falls.
She spreads her arms out toward me in a pick-me-up gesture, the way she used to when she was a toddler. If not for the blood dripping down her face and streaking her stitched-up body, I would have thought her expression as sweet and innocent as it's always been.
“Ryn-Ryn.” Her voice is on the verge of tears. It's the sound of a frightened little girl, one who's sure her big sister can make the monsters under her bed go away. Paige hasn't called me Ryn-Ryn since she was a baby.
I look at the angry stitches crisscrossing her face and body. I stare at her bruises—red and blue all over her poor face and body.
It’s not her fault. Whatever they did to her, she’s the victim, not the monster.
Where have I heard that before?
Something about that thought triggers an image. The image of those chewed-up girls hanging on the tree. Had that crazy couple said something like what I just thought? Is their mad conversation starting to make sense to me?
A thought sneaks into my head like poisoned gas. If Paige could only eat human flesh and nothing else, what would I do? Would I go so far as to use human bait to lure her, thinking I could help her?
Too horrifying to even think about.
And totally irrelevant.
Because there’s no reason to think Paige had to eat anything. Paige is not a low demon. She’s a little girl. A vegetarian. A born humanitarian. A budding Dalai Lama, for chrissake. She only attacked the angel to defend me. That’s all.
Besides, she didn’t eat him, she just… gnawed on him a little.
The chunks of flesh quiver on the floor. My stomach roils.
Paige watches me with her warm brown eyes fringed with doe-like lashes. I concentrate on that and purposely ignore the blood dripping from her chin and the big, cruel stitches running from her lips to her ears.
Behind her, the angel convulses in earnest. His eyes roll, leaving them pure white, and his head bangs repeatedly on the concrete floor. He is having a seizure. I wonder if he can live with chunks of flesh missing and most of his blood on the floor. His body is probably frantically repairing itself even now. Is there a chance that this monster could recover from this?
I push myself up, trying to ignore the slimy fluids under my hands. My throat burns and I feel stiff and bruised all over.
“Ryn-Ryn.” Paige still has her arms up in a forlorn gesture, but I can't quite bring myself to go hug her. Instead, I lurch over to the angel sword and grab it. I walk back a little more smoothly, getting used to my body again.
I look at the angel's blank eyes, his bleeding mouth. His head trembles, tapping against the floor.
I slam the blade into his heart.
I've never killed anyone before. What frightens me isn't that I'm killing someone. What frightens me is how easy it is.
The blade cuts through him as though he is nothing but a rotten piece of fruit. I feel no sympathetic sensation of a soul or a life essence leaving. There is no guilt or shock or grief at the life that was and the person I have become. There is only the stilling of the trembling flesh and the slow exhalation of his last breath.
“Great Lord in Heaven.”
I look up, startled, at the new voice. It's another angel in a lab coat. I get a quick impression of fresh blood soaking his white coat and gloved hands before two more angels push through the door behind him. Both of the new ones also have blood on their coats and gloves.
I almost don't recognize Laylah with her golden hair pulled back in a tight bun. What is she doing here? Isn’t she supposed to be performing surgery on Raffe?
They all stare at me. I wonder why they would be staring at me rather than at my blood-splattered sister when I realize that I still have my sword stuck into the lab angel. I’m sure they have no trouble recognizing the sword for what it is. There have to be at least a dozen rules against humans having an angel sword.
My brain frantically searches for a way out of this alive. But before any of them can start making accusations, they all look up at the ceiling at the same time. Like the lab angel, they hear something I don't. The nervous looks on their faces don't reassure me.
Then I feel it too. First, a rumbling, then a trembling.
Has it been an hour already?
The angels look toward me again, then turn and bolt toward the double doors that the delivery guy used.
I didn't realize I could feel even more unnerved than I was already.
The Resistance has started their attack.
CHAPTER 40
We need to get out before the hotel comes crashing down. But I can’t just let those people get sucked dry by the scorpion-angels. Dragging the ladder to each tank and slowly pulling out each paralyzed person could take hours.
I pull my sword out of the lab angel. I run over to the fetal columns in frustration, holding the sword like a bat.
I swing the blade into one of the scorpion tanks. It’s mostly to let out my frustration and I don’t expect it to do anything other than bounce off.
Before I can even register the impact, the thick tank shatters. Fluid and glass explode onto the concrete floor.
I could get used to this sword.
The scorpion fetus unlatches from its victim. It screeches as it falls. Then it flops and writhes on the glass shards, bleeding all over them. The emaciated woman crumples to the bottom of the broken tank. Her glassy eyes stare into the air.
I have no idea if she’s alive, or if she’ll be in better shape once the venom wears off. This is the best I can do for her. The best I can do for any of them. All I can hope is that somehow, some of them will recover enough to get away from here before things become too explosive, because I can’t drag them up the stairs.
I run over to the other tanks that are holding victims and smash them, one after another. Shards of water and glass spray all over the basement lab. The air fills with the screeching of thrashing scorpion fetuses.
Most of the monsters in the surrounding tanks wake and twitch. A few react violently and slam against their glass prisons. They are the ones that are more fully formed, staring at me through the veined membranes of their eyelids with the understanding that I am preying upon them.
While I’m doing this, a tiny part of me considers running without Paige. She's not really my sister anymore, is she? She's certainly not helpless any longer.
“Ryn-Ryn?” Paige is crying.
She calls to me as if unsure whether I would take care of her. My heart constricts like an iron hand is squeezing it as punishment for thinking of betraying her.
“Yeah, sweetie,” I say in my most reassuring voice. “We have to get out of here. Okay?”
The building shakes again and one of the stitched-up corpses topples. The little boy’s mouth opens when his head hits the floor, revealing metal teeth.
Paige looked that dead before she started moving. Is there any chance this kid could be alive too?
A weird thought pops into my head. Didn’t Raffe say that sometimes, names have power?
Did Paige wakeup because I called her? I scan the bodies leaning against the wall, at their shiny teeth and long nails, their discolored eyes. If they’re alive, would I wake them if I could?
I turn away and smash my blade into another tank. I can’t help but be glad I don’t know the kids’ names.
“Paige?” My mother walks over to us as though in a dream. She crunches over broken glass and weaves to avoid the thrashing monsters as if she sees this kind of thing regularly. Maybe she does. Maybe in her world, this is normal. She sees them and avoids them, but she’s not surprised by them. Her eyes are clear, her expression cautious.
“Baby?” She runs over to Paige and hugs her with no hesitation despite the blood and gore covering her.
My mother cries in big, anguished sobs. For the first time, I realize that she’s been at least as worried and upset over Paige as I have. That it was no accident that she ended up here, the same dangerous place that I trekked to find Paige. That even though her love often manifests itself in ways that a mentally healthy person couldn't understand—might even declare abusive—that doesn't diminish the fact that she does care.
I swallow the tears that threaten to drown me as I watch my mother fuss over Paige.
Mom takes a good look at Paige. The blood. The stitches. The bruises. She doesn't remark on any of them but does make shocked and cooing noises as she strokes Paige's hair and skin.
Then she looks at me. In her eyes is a hard accusation. She blames me for what happened to Paige. I want to tell her I didn't do this to her. How could she think that?
But I don't say anything. I can't. I can only look back at my mother with guilt and remorse. I look at her the way she looked at me when Dad and I found Paige broken and crippled all those years ago. I may not have held the knife to Paige, but this terrible thing happened on my watch.