Free Battle Angel by Scott Speer Page B

dwindling red light. Visible on the horizon were Dark Angels, spectacles of fire born from hell, laughing off the fighter jets that desperately crisscrossed the sky. Jacks looked out across the bleak expanse and saw that most of the freeways were on fire.
    Jackson was surprised there weren’t more demons, actually. He had thought the assault would have started as an immediate curtain of fire and destruction, but right now he only saw a couple dozen or so demons. An explosion rang out in the distance, sounding like it might have come from the Walk of Angels, but Jackson couldn’t be sure without seeing it.
    Although he tried his best to keep up a stern facade, Jackson Godspeed’s face fell as he saw the city he knew and loved struggling to defend itself from these dark emissaries from hell.
    He tried to detach. Make it seem like he was watching an action movie set in some far-off unknown, with a cast of characters he’d never met. People he had never cared about. His jaw stiffened.
    Behind Jackson the elevator dinged, and the gleaming doors opened with a whir. Emily emerged.
    “Jacks, I thought I might find you here,” she said. The hapless security guard ran up to her, but the Aussie bombshell brushed him off easily. “What are you doing? Checking out the action?”
    She crept up to Jackson’s side, eyeing the sky. “Mark would freak out if he knew you’re up here.” Her eyes danced with danger. “You’re such a rebel.”
    “Emily, please go back downstairs. Nobody asked you to come up here, did they?” Jacks said, his tone flat as he watched the destruction unfold.
    “Why are
you
up here, Jackson? Do you feel bad for them or something?” Emily said, her eyes darting about to take in the threatening scene above.
    “It looks like they’re going back,” Jacks said, his tone curious, as if he were commenting on a baseball game on TV instead of a full-scale attack raging just outside the window. But it was true—all the demons seemed to have turned, and were now flying back out toward the ocean. But it didn’t look like they were being driven away. It looked as if somehow they were being
called
back.
    “They’re retreating?” Emily said, eyeing the dark shapes heading back to the ocean. A look of excitement crossed her eyes. “We’ve been down in the bloody sanctuary too long. Let’s go out! We’re good-enough flyers. It’ll be fine.”
    Jackson thought back again to Emily pitching a fit when they first went down to the sanctuary, when a demon had seared across the sky before them, smashing into the Hills.
    “I don’t think you’d want that, Emily,” he said.
    “They’re leaving! They’re gone. You said so yourself,” she said. “C’mon. It’ll be fun. Don’t you like to break the rules?” She winked at him.
    “It’s not about the rules, it’s—”
    “Fine. Suit yourself.” Before Jacks knew it, Emily’s wings had extended with a whoosh and she had flown past the guard in a flash. She was a streak across the sky. She was always the fastest in her class at agility training—not only a sexy model but also a kickass Angel who had some serious moves.
    “Emily!” Jacks called. He shook his head. With a quick tilt down, his wings ripped out of his back, fully sprung. In moments he was soaring out over the Angel City basin, ripping across the sky, trying to catch up with Emily.
    The wind whipping in his ears, Jackson neared Emily—or perhaps she just
let
him get near—and she giggled as she darted out of his grasp, her red hair streaming behind her. “Can’t you keep up with me?” She laughed.
    Then Jackson looked below. The Angel City basin was burning. As far as he could see, hundreds of fires had sprung up, and the freeways looked all but destroyed. The city he had known his whole life had received its first blow.
    And it was devastating.
    His throat plummeted into his stomach as he soared over the destruction. Looking out, he could see the demons were barely visible as they