Two of his Watchers swoop down and catch him before he can crash onto the bridge.

Raffe’s snowy wings land with a thud on the concrete.

A second after that, his sword clatters onto the ground, cracking the concrete with its weight.

Chapter 70

70

The morning light tinges the sky above the San Francisco skyline. It’s forever changed, but I’m starting to find it familiar, if not comforting.

Boats roam the bloody bay, collecting the last of the drowning angels and humans. The boat guys wanted to put the rescued angels into cages and shoot them to debilitate them for a while. I’m sure they would have been happy to gauge how long it would take for them to recover and maybe even see whether they can recover on their own without food and water. But not surprisingly, Josiah and the Watchers insisted that the best they can do is deprive them of blankets and the warm drinks the rescued humans get.

Now that Uriel is dead, they have a shortage of archangels. Raffe seems to be unofficially in charge by default, only he’s going in and out of consciousness as we race down the bay to the nearest working – or at least standing – hospital.

The Watchers are executing Raffe’s orders and reporting back to him when he’s conscious. The angels are so shell-shocked that they’re just following orders.

I get the impression that so long as it sounds reasonable to them, they’ll do what Raffe says, at least for now. This is a group that’s so used to following orders that they probably wouldn’t know what to do without someone in charge.

The humans have mostly left the bridge. I’m using Josiah and the Watchers to relay messages for me too, just because it’s easy for now. I’m too worried about Raffe to help much with the logistics of making sure the humans get to shore. In theory, they’re following my orders, but in reality, they’re doing whatever the Tweedle Twins tell them.

I glance over at Raffe for the hundredth time as I huddle with Pooky Bear beneath a coat that someone gave me. I’m shivering as if it’s zero degrees, and no matter how much I hug myself, I can’t get warm. I can barely see his dark hair blowing in the wind among all the Watchers and angels surrounding him. He’s lying on one of the bench seats of the speedboat that the twins found for us.

The angels and Watchers move aside and look at me expectantly. Then they all take off into the blue sky. Raffe is conscious and looking at me.

I walk over to him. I’ve been trying not to be a big baby by insisting on holding his hand in front of the angels, but the urge is strong. I don’t want to embarrass him even when he’s unconscious.