End of Days (Penryn & the End of Days #3)(29)

‘He wants to recruit me by impressing me. And he’s more desperate for fighters this time. He can sense I have military experience.’

‘So are you joining the Resistance?’

‘Not likely. I saw their dissection tables.’

‘What dissection tables?’

‘Where they dissect anything that isn’t strictly human. They have a prime table reserved in case they ever catch an angel.’

‘Oh.’

I want to remind him that we’re at war with an enemy we don’t understand. But it’s pointless to argue. I’ll never be okay with Uriel’s experiments on humans regardless of what reasons he thinks he has, so why would Raffe understand any reason we might have to cut into his kind?

‘They’re also working on an angel plague that they hope will wipe out my entire species.’

‘Really?’

‘They raided the lab on Angel Island when they rescued their people and stole something they could tinker with. Apparently, Laylah is working on a human plague and generating various strains to optimize the damage. There’s one strain that they hope might work against angels.’

‘How close are they to creating this angelic plague?’

‘Not very. Otherwise, I would have had to kill them.’

We walk in silence, the concept of kill or be killed heavy between us.

I’m relieved when we reach Paige, if only to interrupt the silence.

My sister is sitting beside her locusts. My mother and her friend stop at a respectful distance and stare at the beasts.

Paige gets up, sending the locusts flying to the branches above, and runs to Mom. Paige is the baby of the family, and she has a different relationship with our mother than I do. Mom strokes her hair while Paige snuggles into her hug.

‘How did it go with Doc?’ Raffe whispers.

I take a deep breath and give him the bad news about Doc’s broken arm. He doesn’t say anything, but I know the news hits him hard. His amputated wings are withering every second they’re not on him, and I’m pretty sure they won’t last as long as they did last time. And now, the only doctor who can reattach them won’t be back in action for six weeks.

And then there’s my starving sister . . .

I feel drained. There must be another answer, but I’m too emotionally beat up to think. I just want to crawl into the vault in my head and close the door on the world.

I lean toward Raffe and feel his muscles against my arm. I close my eyes and relax into him. He feels so solid. I’m not sure if I’m giving him comfort or the other way around.

When I open my eyes, my mom’s friend is watching us. I quickly step away from Raffe and stand tall. It’s a strange thing for her to do – watching us instead of the locusts or the cut-up little girl.

‘Somebody is looking for you,’ she says.

Oh, right. ‘Yeah, I heard.’ The angels, the hellions – who doesn’t want a piece of me right now?

She nods toward Raffe. ‘I meant him.’

Do they have a bounty on him too? He had a red mask over his face when we were fighting the angels, so they must have thought he was just some demon, right?

‘I have a message for you,’ says the woman to Raffe. ‘The message is, freedom and gratitude. Trust, my brother.’

Raffe spends a couple of seconds taking that in. ‘Where is he?’ he asks.

‘Waiting for you downtown at the church with the stained glass.’

‘He’s there now?’

‘Yes.’

He turns to me. ‘Do you know where that is?’

‘Sort of,’ I say, having a vague memory of a couple of different churches in Palo Alto. ‘What’s going on?’

He doesn’t say anything.

I wonder if the twins got their message wrong. Maybe the angels are looking for Raffe and not me.

‘Do you need anything more from me?’ the woman asks. She’s creeping me out a little with her calm and peaceful voice.

‘No, thank you.’ Raffe’s thoughts are far away.

The woman takes off her hood. Her head is shaved, looking particularly pale.

She takes off her coat, letting it fall to the ground. A sheet is wrapped around her body, tied at one shoulder. Her dark eyes look huge in her bald head, and they gaze at me with peace and serenity. Her hands are together with her fingers interlocking in front of her. The only thing that mars her old-world look is the pair of white tennis shoes she wears beneath her sheet.

She gives us a little bow before turning toward my sister. She doesn’t say any of the rehearsed recruiting statements that I would expect from someone so obviously part of an apocalypse cult. She just moves toward my sister quietly, then stops in front of her.

My mother bows to the lady. ‘Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for volunteering.’

‘Volunteering for what?’ I ask, feeling uneasy.

‘Don’t worry about it, Penryn.’ My mother waves me away. ‘I’ll take care of this.’

‘Take care of what?’ I’m not used to seeing my mom dealing with people, and I’m certainly not used to seeing her interacting with people the way she is with this woman. ‘Take care of what, Mom?’

My mother turns to me with exasperation, as if I’m embarrassing her. ‘I’ll explain it to you when you’re older.’