End of Days (Penryn & the End of Days #3)(14)

Raffe tosses the backpack to me. I assume the bundle attached to it is his wings.

I slip on the backpack while a couple of Paige’s locusts land beside her. They hiss at the shadows gathering around them.

I take a step back. I still can’t bring myself to get too close to those scorpion stingers. ‘We gotta go, Paige. Can you get them to fly us?’

My heart races at the thought of being held by one of these monsters, but I’m more comfortable with that idea right now than being in Raffe’s arms. He’s made it pretty clear how he feels about me – about us – and the fact that there is no us.

Raffe throws me a dirty look. He bends over and swipes his arm behind my knees, lifting me up in his embrace.

‘I can go with one of the locusts.’ I stiffen in his arms and try to lean as far away from him as I can.

‘The hell you will.’ He runs a couple of steps before spreading his wings.

With two sweeps of his wide wings, we’re up in the air.

My arms wrap around his neck. I have no choice but to lean close and hold tight. This isn’t the time to argue.

The locusts are just behind us with my sister.

Shadows leap toward us through the trees. Angel Island must be some kind of hellion convention center. Either that or these new hellions are far too good at organizing.

Raffe leads the way toward San Francisco. Behind us, a cloud of hellions bursts out of the trees after us.





11


As usual, there’s a swarm of locusts funneling over Alcatraz. My hair whips my face from the wind generated by their wings. As we near, a stream of locusts heads our way.

They join our little group until we swell into a swarm of our own. The creatures aren’t nuzzling us, but they’re not attacking either. They seem to be joining us on our flight by sheer instinct.

The hellion cloud behind us pauses. It’s nowhere near the size of the locust swarm. It hovers in place for a few seconds as if assessing the situation, then the cloud turns around and shrinks into the distance.

I take a deep breath and let the tension out. We’re safe for the moment.

Raffe watches them go with a frown, deep in thought. I look back at the hellions retreating and realize what the problem is. The hellions aren’t behaving as stupidly as they should.

I have a nagging worry about what just happened. What did I release into the world?

The funnel over Alcatraz becomes thinner as more of the locust swarm peels off and heads toward us.

This new group flows in a spike formation led by a locust with an extra large scorpion tail curled over his head. Something about that makes me nervous. They’re just following my sister out of instinct, aren’t they?

I dismiss the uneasiness as a reasonable reaction to the sight of a large locust swarm coming in our direction.

But a second later, the leader proves my worries right. He’s close enough now for me to see the white streak in his long hair. I turn cold when I recognize him.

He’s the one who toyed with me by shoving me against the rollup gate of the shipping container filled with desperate people who had been starved for sport. This is the one Beliel said they bred and trained to be part of the locust leader group.

He’s bigger than the others, and I remember Beliel saying the leader group got better nutrition. Why is he here? Can Paige order the locusts to turn on him? This one is too twisted and dangerous to live. I don’t want him anywhere near us.

When he reaches us, he grabs the arm of the locust Paige was tending to earlier, jerking him to a stop in midair. White Streak looks almost twice the size of Paige’s locust.

White Streak rips off a wing and tosses the screeching locust toward the water.

Paige screams. She stares wide-eyed as her pet helplessly beats the one wing he has left as he falls like a rock toward the water.

He makes a tiny splash in the dark bay. The water swallows him up as though he never existed.

White Streak roars at Paige’s other locusts, jabbing his oversized stinger menacingly into the air.

Paige’s small band of locusts buzzes in circles, looking confused. They look to White Streak and steal glances at Paige, who is crying over her murdered pet.

White Streak roars again.

All but four of Paige’s locusts flutter reluctantly into the insect swarm behind White Streak.

White Streak’s locusts tighten their circle around us. The roar of their wings is deafening, and our hair blows everywhere. White Streak swings back and forth, staring down Paige.

She looks like a little stitched-up doll in a monster’s arms with an even bigger monster stalking her.

Raffe must feel my tension, because he flies in White Streak’s path toward Paige. Raffe’s demon wings claw the air around us with every stroke. He pauses in front of White Streak, letting his crescent-shaped wing blades flash in the sun.

White Streak widens his eyes like a crazed man. I wonder what he was in the World Before? A serial killer?

He puffs up at the sight of Raffe, assessing him. He glances at me, probably wondering whether Raffe will drop me to fight him.

He roars at Paige’s locusts, not daring to take on Raffe directly, at least not right now. He may be a killer when it comes to starved prisoners and little girls, but he’s not willing to fight an angel demon.

He turns and swipes his tail at one of Paige’s remaining locusts. He doesn’t sting, just uses his stinger to slice Paige’s locust across the face, drawing a line of blood across his cheek. The smaller locust cringes, looking like he thought that the bigger one meant to slit his throat.