Immortal City

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Maddy’s eyes snapped open. Her head spun, throbbing with an unknown pain. Stumbling backward, she felt something hard and cold cut into her back. She reached behind her and felt its smooth surface.

The light pole.

In front of her shone the headlights of two approaching cars. Where was she? And what was happening? Fragments of memories swirled in her mind. The party. Talking with Ethan. And kissing him? Had that really happened?

Then there was some boy named Simon, and. .

“They’re. . racing,” she whispered to herself. It wasn’t a statement of fact so much as the recollection of a memory. Like trying to piece together the remnants of a fleeting dream. The headlights grew closer. The cars swerved. She thought she could hear someone laughing.

What the hell is going on?

She forced her mind to function. She had left the party, she had been walking home, and — A single, terrifying idea rapidly emerged, slicing through all the other muddled thoughts like a shriek.

The Range Rover.

It all came back in a rush. The impact, the sound of her bones breaking, the way the SUV’s grill felt as it embed-ded itself inside her. It was all too real to be imagined, too horrific to be make-believe. There was only one possible explanation.

She’d had another premonition. The grisly vision was the most intense she had ever experienced. Because it was her own.

Watching the headlights bear down on her, Maddy suddenly knew one thing more absolutely and completely than she had known anything in her entire life: she had just foreseen her own death. And unless she did something in the next second to change the outcome of events, she was, without any doubt, going to die.

Light blazed at her, but from the other direction now.

She snapped her head around and saw the headlights of the Range Rover. There it was, like the carriage of death itself.

Like the reaper’s coach. The SUV’s horn roared, and she watched helplessly as it swerved in her direction and the tires jumped the curb. With almost detached clarity, Maddy knew it was already too late. It was over for her, and there was nothing left to do but watch it happen. Once again she saw her reflection in the windshield, but this time her face wasn’t surprised, or even horror stricken. It was strangely calm. Peaceful even. She closed her eyes and waited for the impact.

She was hit hard.

Pain shot through her body, but not from the direction she was expecting. Whatever struck her didn’t feel like the grill of the SUV. What it felt like simply didn’t seem possible.

It felt like a hand.

The next thing Maddy knew, she was lying on the pavement looking sideways across the road as the Range Rover plunged into the light pole. The scream of collapsing metal filled the air as the hood exploded, sending deadly pieces of car and windshield tearing through the night. The back end of the Rover jumped off the pavement, fishtailed around, and sailed in her direction.

“No,” commanded a voice above her. A voice? There was a sound like a hole hammered straight through the night, a flash of all-encompassing white light, and then, silence. When Maddy opened her eyes, what she saw was beyond anything she could have possibly imagined.

The world had frozen.

Everything had just stopped. It was as if Maddy had been watching a movie of her death and had simply pressed pause. The Range Rover hovered in front of her with its back end off the ground like some kind of automotive ballerina. Pieces of exploded hood and windshield swam like a sea of destruction all around her. Shards of broken glass hung like twinkling stars. The world held its breath, poised on the knife tip of time, and waited.

Maddy lifted her gaze. In the hard cast of the streetlamp she thought she could make out the silhouette of a figure crouched over her, shielding her with his body, holding onto her hand. Pain was radiating through her now, dimming her already reeling consciousness. She felt her eyes 3start to close again, but just before they did, she looked at the silhouette and thought she could make out the distinctive outline of wings.

She went into shock. Everything went black.

Maddy didn’t know if she was alive, dead, or simply dreaming. She had the vague sense she was flying; the wind and the cold on her face were almost unbearable. A jumble of strange, inexplicable images swirled in her head like pieces of a nightmare. Charging headlights and distorted screams, a floating car and a mysterious, shadowy figure. She didn’t know if it was real or imagined. About the only thing she was sure of was the pain. A terrible ache throbbed in her lower back, and there was an intense burning in her left shoulder. In the murky neverland of her semiconsciousness, Maddy tried to find something real to hold on to. She forced her eyes to open and focus.

She saw wings. She watched the way the raindrops hit them and beaded instantly off, the lightly glowing wings staying dry. Whatever kind of hallucination she was having, it was undeniably vivid. Then the cold numbed her mind in-to unconsciousness, and she blacked out again.

The next time Maddy opened her eyes, she found herself sitting with her back against some kind of concrete wall.

It was raining, the smell of it everywhere, and she listened to its steady patter on a canvas awning over her head. Not ten feet beyond her shoes the floor ended, and the lights of Angel City glowed in the soggy night. She had to be sitting on the roof of a tall building. She looked up and saw the words DIVINE RECORDS glowing on a huge curving sign.

Above that, a white spike reached up thirty feet up into the air and pierced the churning sky.

She tried to sit up, and only then did she become aware of the heavy arms wrapped around her. They were so hot they were almost searing. She turned and her eyes traced the contours of a perfect, dripping face. She saw his pale blue eyes.

“How do you feel?” Jackson asked.

It was impossible. He was sitting there with her, drenched, and what remained of a white robe hung in tatters over his body. She must still be hallucinating. Or per-haps she was dreaming. Maybe her mind had escaped her death and taken her here, to some kind of fantasy? She was sure she wasn’t experiencing reality, but then again, she could feel the intense heat of his embrace. She could feel the heave of his chest through her wet clothes. Most inescapable of all, she could sense his distinct presence. She was getting to know it now, like the scent of a familiar person. It was undeniably him.

Maddy realized the Angel was looking at her intently, waiting for her to say something.

“What?” Maddy croaked.

“I said, how do you feel?”

“I. . hurt,” Maddy said, realizing it as much as saying it.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Jacks said gruffly. “I didn’t have much time and there wasn’t any other way. You hit the ground pretty hard.”

“What. . am I doing here?” she said weakly.

“What. . happened?”

“You were almost in a very bad accident. But you’re safe now.”

“An. . accident?” The memories flooded back. For several seconds she was seized by panic as the sequence of events rushed upon her.

“It came out of nowhere. It came right at me!” she said, suddenly panicked. “It all happened so fast. . I tried to get out of the way—”

“You wouldn’t have made it,” Jacks said quietly. His tone was absolute. “It would have crushed you.”

Maddy felt adrenaline rush into her system. Mortal fear rose in her throat like bile. He was right. She knew she was going to die. She had foreseen it. She had closed her eyes, waited for the impact, and. . she remembered waiting for the collision of the SUV’s grill with her body and instead being knocked sideways and out of the way. Or pulled sideways, she realized. She felt pain in her shoulder flare angrily. It must have been him standing over her, protecting her. The reason she was alive.

“What did you do?” she in a desperate whisper.

Jacks looked away from her, out to the boiling storm.

“I broke the law.”

“You what?” she choked. “Why?” Somewhere in the distance, a ribbon of lightning flashed.

“For you,” Jacks growled.

Maddy reeled. Had Jackson Godspeed rescued her from certain death? And after everything he had said to her at the party? And how badly he had hurt her? And humili-ated her? And insulted her? Sudden, uncontrollable anger welled up, but now it was much worse than it had been at the party, because if he had really saved her life, she now owed him. After everything he had done and said, now she was going to have to be grateful to him?

“I told you to stay away from me,” she said cuttingly.

“What part of leave me alone was unclear to you?”

Jacks released her from his grip, and she immediately slid away. The cold bit through her wet clothes almost instantly.

“I should have guessed you’d be this way,” he said in exasperation.

She struggled to her feet and had to lean against the concrete wall to keep from falling over. She was still dizzy.

“You had no right to do that.”

A snarl escaped Jacks’s lips, startling her. In an instant he was on his feet, walking out into the pouring rain, his shoulders heaving. Then he turned and glared at her.

Maddy winced at his hostile expression.

“You stubborn, impossible girl!” he yelled through the raindrops. “Why are you always like this? I save your life, and you’re angry with me?” His blue eyes were blazing, his tone ferocious. Maddy felt her own anger evaporate in his burning gaze.

“I just, I told you to leave me alone,” she said again, desperately. “Please.”

“Why?” he demanded. “Why do you push me away?

Am I not good enough for you?” He was stalking toward her now.

“You don’t understand, Jacks,” she said, the emotions twisting inside her. She walked out from under the awning and felt the rain soak into her skin.

“What don’t I understand?!” he demanded.

“I have to stay away from you,” she burst.

He stopped. “What?”

“Self-preservation!” Maddy screamed. The words rushed out of her as if some internal dam had finally broken. “Don’t you get it? I have to keep myself away from you so I don’t get sucked into the illusion that you might actually like me,” she said, water dripping off her lips. “I can’t let myself believe you actually have feelings for me, Jacks. If I do that, I’ll wake up one day and realize that you’re a famous Angel and I’m. . I’m nobody.” She felt a lump rising in her throat and swallowed it down hard. She wasn’t going to let him see her cry. “My life hasn’t been easy like yours, Jacks. Things like this don’t happen for me. So, I’ve just learned it’s easier to push them away.”

Jacks stared, astonished, through the downpour. “You have to keep away from me? I have to fight to keep away from you. Do you have any idea how hard this has been for me? I meet you one night, and just like that, I can’t get you out of my head. When our hands touched, and I saw this. .streak of beauty in your eyes. . I’d never felt anything like that before, nothing even close.” He began to pace furiously, the rain flicking off him as he went. “All of a sudden, every fiber of my being is drawn to you, to be with you, and I don’t know why.” He stopped and pointed an accusing finger at her. “I didn’t ask for this. But I felt something in that back room with you, and it’s stayed with me ever since. I want to be with you. I need to be with you.” His tone was both angry and helpless.

“And that’s why you took me to your party, to show me how important you were, how everyone loved you, how I’d just be one more speck in a sea of girls who wanted you and your fame and your car. You did that because you wanted to ‘be with me.’” All Maddy could do was scoff.

Jacks’s face rippled with disbelief. “Maddy, I took you there because I wanted to show you the night of your life. I wanted you to have everything, to show everyone else you were special! If I thought you’d see it that way, I never would’ve taken you to the party. Those things aren’t important to me. I just wanted to spend time with you, to make you feel as special, as alive, as you made me feel when we met.”

“Why are you being so cruel?” Maddy said, her voice cracking. “Please, just leave me alone.” She turned and walked away from him farther into the rain, her emotions twisting inside her. She didn’t feel the hand on her arm until he had spun her around. Then she felt the fingers of his other hand lace into her hair, and in an instant, his wet mouth was against hers.

The kiss was raw. Hungry. She opened her mouth and his immortal breath rushed into her. He pulled her against him and kissed her again. The storm raged around them.

When their lips finally came apart, his breathing was hard and ragged. She felt the steam of his breath against her hair. Her feet touched the tops of his, and standing on him like that, she let him hold her. The downpour was steady all around them. Maddy concentrated on slowing her racing heart. She could still taste him in her mouth. She could still hear his words echoing in her head. Could she really believe him? Could he really have feelings for her?

She stepped back off his toes and looked at him. He was watching her through wet stabs of hair, scrutinizing her. Waiting. Another ribbon of lightning glowed in the sky and she saw a flash of his eyes. She felt desire welling up inside her. She wanted to kiss him again. But she didn’t want to be a silly, Angelstruck girl. She took another step away and looked out into the storm, embarrassed. Jacks’s face fell in frustration.

They stood there quietly, neither speaking.

“I was scared, Jacks,” Maddy finally whispered. “I mean, not about what happened to me. But scared for you.

The reporters. . they said you were next. With the murders on the Walk of Angels.”

Jacks nodded, gently wiping water away from her cheek with his thumb. “Well, now I have something much worse to worry about.”

“What happens now?” Maddy said.

“Now they’ll come for me.” She looked back at him.

His face had hardened.

“What?”

“The Angels.” He paused. “The Council’s Disciplinary Agents.”

“Because you saved me?” she asked in disbelief. The idea of Angel Police flickered in her mind. What would that even look like?

“Because I saved someone who wasn’t supposed to be saved. There are consequences in my world, Maddy.”

“What consequences?” The lightning flashed again and this time she saw fear in his eyes.

“They’ll take my wings,” he said quietly.

“They can make you. . they can take them?” A stab of panic hit her stomach.

“Yes,” he said, his mouth a grim line. “The Archangels would never admit it officially, although somebody out there sure seems to know about it. They’ll remove my wings, which will draw the immortality out of me. They’ll do it slowly and make sure they do it right.”

“They can’t do that. You’re Jackson Godspeed.”

“They can. And they will. There is a system to uphold.

Disciplinary Agents are hunting me as we speak.” Jacks’s face was miserable but resolute. “Nothing is impossible when you break the rules.”

Maddy shook her head, as if the movement could somehow shake the reality away. She simply couldn’t believe it. That by saving her he had actually, knowingly put himself in line for a consequence this severe. So much was kept hidden about the Angels, about how they handled their internal affairs — brutally, it turned out. All the while they put on a smooth, clean exterior for the public and the media.

“What can I do?” she said finally.

Jacks looked at her through the deluge.

“Come with me.”

There he stood in the pouring rain, the image of shirtless soaked perfection. He stood before her offering her a choice just like he had the night they went flying. She was at another crossroads. She knew she could just leave. Knew she probably should. But they were going to take his wings, and it was all her fault. Her fault for going to the party, her fault for trying to follow through with her plan, her fault for leaving and insisting on walking home. Could she really leave him now? Before she had even decided, her mouth opened.

“Yes,” she said. Just like when he had invited her to the party. It simply came out, as though her true desires could no longer be repressed.

Jacks smiled a dripping, radiant smile. A flash of lightning lit the roof, followed closely by a bark of thunder.

“There are Angels I know who will help us. I can’t fly or the ADC will take me immediately. We need to get off this roof and lie low, travel on foot.”

Maddy nodded. Her decision made, questions began pounding her mind. She pulled out her BlackBerry Miracle and tried to power it up. The screen was black and lifeless.

“Dead from the rain,” Jacks said. “Mine too. They can track them anyway. Come on, let’s get going.”

Jacks began walking toward a door on the far end of the rooftop. Maddy lingered for a moment, thoughtful.

“How did you know?” Maddy asked.

“What?” He strained to hear her over the roar of the downpour.

“How did you know I was in trouble?” she said again.

She might not follow the modern Angels, but one thing she did know from her required Angel History reading was that they never disclosed how they made their saves. They simply performed them, leaving the public to guess about their trade secrets.

Jacks’s eyes searched hers. How many rules could he break in one night? “You know I’m not allowed to tell you this.”

Maddy stood where she was. Something in her needed to know. “Do you trust me?” she asked quietly. The rain continued pounding down across the Immortal City.

After a moment, Jacks let out a long breath and spoke. “I saw it,” he said simply.

She looked at him through the cascading liquid.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I felt it first and then saw it. After I focused on your frequency,” Jacks said. “Every person has a frequency.

In Guardian training we learn how to tune to them so we can then do it for each of our Protections. We learn people’s frequencies. That way we can instantly feel when something bad is about to occur and then tune in through the static of all the other human beings. It sounds more complicated than it really is.”

“But with me?”

Jacks paused. “I felt your frequency that first night in the diner. How could I not?” He looked out into the night.

“It’s the big secret of how we always know when our Protections are in danger. Tuning to the frequencies. Otherwise it would just be random images, feelings. Like jumbled static.”

Maddy’s heart stopped in her chest. The world around her halted. Everything faded into the background as Jacks’s words rang in her head. The Angel looked at her stunned expression.

“I know it sounds amazing, but to us it’s really no big deal, like flying or anything else we train for that the NAS keeps secret. It’s just one of those things. Like being double-jointed or something.” He laughed.

Even soaking wet, Maddy felt every hair on her body standing on end. Jacks walked over to the roof access door and tried the handle. It was unlocked. He turned to her.

Despite the rain, he could see she had gone white as a ghost.

“What is it?”

“We need to go back to my house,” Maddy said. “I have to talk to my uncle.” Lightning flashed right overhead, followed by a vicious crack.

“I’m sorry, Maddy, it’s just too dangerous. They’ll be looking for us there.”

“I have to, Jacks.” Her voice was growing hysterical. “I have to talk to my uncle. It’s important.”

“Maddy, we can’t. It’s out of the question,” Jacks said.

“You don’t understand. I’m going to my uncle’s house,” Maddy yelled through the storm, “and I’m going whether you come with me or not.”

Then the night seemed to literally explode.

It was like a terrible firework lighting up the sky as a finger of lightning reached down and struck a power line on the hill not far away. The crack of the contact deafened Maddy’s ears, leaving them ringing. A plume of blinding sparks erupted from the transmission tower, momentarily illuminating the ghostly Angel City sign, and then, like strands of Christmas lights being unplugged, the streets and neighborhoods of Angel City went dark. They blinked off one by one until Maddy and Jacks were consumed in blackness. The rain continued to splash down, washing the Immortal City’s streets clean under the cover of darkness, churning filth into the overflowing gutters.

A square of light formed in the abyss as Jacks opened the roof access door, bathing them both in the dim light cast from the building’s emergency power.

“Is there any way I can get you to change your mind?”

he asked.

“No,” Maddy said stubbornly.

“Okay.” Jacks sighed. “Then let’s go.” He gestured to the door.

Her heart still racing, Maddy followed him out of the rain and into the cold — but dry — stairwell. She couldn’t feel her feet on the metal steps as they descended. Maddy’s scattered mind had focused into a single laser of a thought.

It was time to find out what really happened to her mother and father. Time to find out who her parents really were.