How many seven-year-olds had seen the world go up in flames?Īngel shut her eyes tight. She thought of Max holding her hand, calling Angel her baby. Flying, diving together in one strong V, with Max at its center. It almost felt like she was completely and totally alone. That she hadn't told anyone.Īngel tilted her head back to feel the chill of wind rustling her blond curls, now stringy and dirty. The power inside her was the only thing that scared Angel now. It had terrified her so much more than the idea of Armageddon. Angel had imagined her grief as a blackness stretching out before her, the crushing weight of Max's death a night without stars, without hope, without end. You didn't see what was there-you saw the spaces between. She couldn't see anything from her night perch on the cliff, but even in the light of day, the horizon didn't look like anything familiar or natural. You were ready.Īngel squinted into the darkness. She traced her fingers along her scars and fought back the memories.ĭespite the warnings from nature-the earthquakes, the floods-despite all the efforts of science-Angel winced, remembering the scalpels and fluorescent lightbulbs and blindingly white sheets-despite everything, in the end, the earth had been savagely claimed back for nature.Īnd despite Max's missions and the flock's preparations over the years, they still hadn't been ready.īut then, who could ever really be ready for the end of the world? She had endured enough panic to last her a lifetime.Īngel hugged her knees to her chest and folded her dingy white wings around herself, cocoon-like. There had been plenty of screaming, fire and brimstone, and panic. Wasn't noise what the apocalypse was supposed to be about?īut there had been chaos, Angel reminded herself. Shouldn't there be the din of destruction thundering around her? The crash of buildings sinking into rubble? Inconsolable wails mourning all that was lost? That the world as they'd known it had gone so quietly, slipping into the ether like an old, beaten dog, was disconcerting, to say the least. Her wings were spread out behind her, her ravaged legs swinging into nothingness, her ears straining in the strange new silence.

IT WAS NIGHT, and Angel was perched on the hot surface of the scorched rock cliff.

Nevermore book james patterson