It still amazes me to see these monsters listening to my baby sister. Our stare-down lasts a moment longer until the beasts lower their stingers under Paige’s gentle crooning. I let out my breath, and we back away, letting Paige soothe them.

Paige bends to gather up Raffe’s severed wings. She had been lying on them, and the stained feathers look crushed, but they begin fluffing almost instantly in her arms. I can’t blame Raffe for cutting them off Beliel before the locusts could suck them dry along with the rest of the demon, but I wish he hadn’t had to do it. Now we’ll have to find a doctor to reattach them to Raffe before they wither.

We start up the beach and see a couple of rowboats tied to a tree. The island must be occupied after all.

Raffe motions for us to hide while he heads up the slope.

It looks like there used to be a row of houses on one side of the hill. On the lower ground, only the concrete foundations remain, littered with smashed boards stained with water and salt. But on the higher ground, several boarded-up buildings are intact.

We skitter behind the nearest building. It’s large enough to have been barracks of some kind. Like the others, it’s sealed up with white painted boards. They look like they’d been shut up long before the Great Attack.

The whole thing feels like a ghost settlement except for the house on the hill overlooking the bay. It’s a perfectly intact Victorian, complete with a white picket fence. It’s the only building that looks like a family home and the only one with color or any sense of life.

I don’t see any threats, certainly nothing that the locusts can’t scare off, but I stay out of sight anyway. I watch Raffe as he leaps to fly up the hill, moving behind the cover of barrack to tree, barrack to tree, working his way toward the main house.

When he gets there, gunfire shatters the peace.

Chapter 2

2

Raffe flattens himself against a wall.

‘We’re not here to harm you,’ he shouts.

Another gunshot answers from an upstairs window. I flinch, my nerves about as taut as they can be.

‘I can hear you talking in there,’ shouts Raffe. He must think we’re all deaf. I guess compared to angels, we are. ‘And the answer is no. I doubt that my wings will be worth as much as angel wings. There is no chance of you being able to take me on, so stop fooling yourselves. We just want the house. Be smart. Leave.’

The front door slams open. Three burly men step out, pointing their rifles in different directions as if unsure where their enemies are.