All the hellions’ attention was on the rock, and I catch them by surprise. I manage to smack several creatures out of the way with my door. That gives me a sliver of room to run.

As soon as I get my foot on the asphalt, claws grab me. All teeth and spittle, it’s the side of hellions I haven’t seen in my sword dreams. They run from Raffe. With him, they are the victims. With me, they are the killers.

A hellion’s teeth scrape my cheek. Hands grab my arm and then claw at my chest. I hear myself screaming.

I grab its chin, shoving the head and mouth as far back as I can. For such a skinny little thing, it’s extremely strong. I’m twisted as far away from it as I can be while trying to snap its neck backward.

Its head is frantically moving back and forth, gnashing at me. It gets closer to my face, so close that I can smell its rotting-fish breath.

It gashes me with its claws, not even trying to save its own neck. It must be insane. I’m not going to win this battle.

My back is to the car. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see two others climbing past the door to get at me. I frantically look at one, then the other. No gun, I can’t draw my sword, and I’m trapped in the wedge of the car door.

The best I can hope for is that people get a few minutes to run while the hellions are busy tearing me apart. It’s a Penryn party.

Suddenly, they all stop.

Their bat-like faces lift into the air, their ugly nostrils sniffing madly. One of them shakes its head like a dog shaking off water.

The one that was about to reach my neck with its claws backs off, letting me go. The ones climbing over the door can’t back off fast enough. All around me, I sense terror.

They all run away.

It takes me a second to realize that I’m free and still alive.

In the headlight beams, a pair of legs walk toward the rush of hellions who are running from the car. The beam of light creeps up the person’s body as the legs move toward me until I can see who it is.

It’s my mother.

The hellions run. Away from the school, away from the people, and especially away from my mother.

‘What the hell?’ I stare, dumbfounded.

Then the smell finally hits my awareness. It reeks here. The windshield is splattered with Mom’s rotten eggs. Old yellow-and-black goo oozes across the windshield like a giant bird dropping.

The smell.

They’re running from the smell. They’re running with the same terror that the hellions did from the demon in the Pit when he hissed at them. Does the smell remind them of their evil bosses? Do they assume an angry demon lord is coming when they smell rotten eggs?

I stare at my mother as she walks toward me with eggs in each hand.

She may be insane, but she has seen and experienced things. Things that other people haven’t understood.

By the time she reaches me, the hellions have all run off.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks.

I nod. ‘How’d you do that?’

‘It does stink something awful, doesn’t it?’ My mom wrinkles her nose at me.

I stare at her, speechless, before I let out a weak laugh.

22

I walk into the grove with my mother. Another woman follows us a few steps behind.

I turn to her and say, ‘Hello.’

She bows her head slightly. She looks about the same age as my mom and wears a midlength coat with a hood that covers her head. Beneath the coat, a dress falls to her ankles and drapes over her slippers. There’s something familiar about her dress, but the thought flitters through my mind and gets pushed out by bigger things.

‘She’s with me,’ says my mom. I’m not sure what to make of her. My mother usually doesn’t have friends, but it’s a whole new world, and maybe I don’t know as much about my mom as I thought.

The grove is quiet except for the crunching of our feet and the sound of someone running toward us. I look back and see Raffe fast approaching on foot. He’s almost invisible with his dark trench coat and cap. He must have come running when he heard me scream during the hellion attack.

Both my mother and her friend freeze when they see his figure, but I put out my hand and nod to show that he’s with me. They continue into the grove while I drop back to wait for Raffe.

My mom looks back to keep an eye on us and doesn’t even try to be polite about it. She’s fully vigilant, scanning the shadows. Good for her.

‘You all right?’ His voice is soft, almost apologetic. I wonder if he thought that it would be better for me if the hellions didn’t see him fighting for me. There were too many for him to kill them all, so a lot of them would have escaped and told other hellions. Or maybe he couldn’t afford to have Obi and the others see him fighting full force.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Those ugly bullies were more afraid of my mommy than any warrior angel anyway. She’s far more scary.’

He nods, looking preoccupied and troubled.

‘What did Obi show you?’

‘He gave me a tour of the camp.’

‘He showed you the ramen supplies?’

‘He showed me their weapons stock. Their evacuation plan. Their surveillance system.’

I almost trip over a branch. ‘Why would he do that?’ The question comes out more forcefully than I intended. Alarm bells are going off in my head. ‘He was Mr. Paranoid the last time he saw you.’

‘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?’