Angel Fire by L. A. Weatherly

against my ear as the crowd screamed, “ Sí! Sí! ”
    The woman crouched down on her high heels, flinging one arm up as she shouted a third time. Noise thundered through the night; the crowd went berserk, screaming and jumping up and down.
    Alex started to speak, then broke off, straightening abruptly. I caught my breath as I saw it too. One of the angels had just dodged to the left, its great wings slicing through the air. The angel paused, hovering, as it seemed to look around it. With a sudden flurry it darted aside again.
    And then, on the far side of the square, another angel vanished in a petal-pattern of radiance, like a firework going off over the crowd. Pieces of light drifted to the ground.
    I stared dumbly as they twinkled in the floodlights. I could hardly get the words out. “Is – is there anything else that can cause that?”
    When Alex spoke, his voice sounded rough. “No,” he said. “No, there isn’t. Somebody just shot an angel.”
    We glanced at each other. I felt the tense excitement pulsing through him; it matched my own. There was another AK out there in the crowd – someone else who knew how to fight the angels. More than one in fact, because back towards the stage, two angels were flying towards the one who had first dodged – and suddenly one of them lunged to the side too, as if avoiding a bullet. At the same moment, the first angel jerked away again with a bright shimmer.
    “At least three gunmen,” murmured Alex. The muscles in his forearms looked taut. “Christ, there’s a whole team of AKs out there.”
    “ Can there be?” I said in a daze. “I thought you were the only one!”
    “I don’t know – maybe the CIA set up another group down here without telling us, or maybe someone else figured out how to fight them—” Alex broke off, tapping the car roof as he watched the scene. “Jesus, why are you letting them go on the offensive?” he muttered to the unseen AKs. “They know you’re there, just shoot them already!”
    As he spoke, one of the three angels twisted nimbly to the side, wings glinting. I went cold as it hit me: the AKs were shooting at the angels; they were shooting at them almost non-stop.
    But they were missing.
    I knew from Alex that everyone missed sometimes; an angel’s halo wasn’t an easy target, especially when they were in motion. You had to be accurate a lot more often than you weren’t, though. If you missed too many times, then what was going on right now happened: the angels realized you were there, and moved in for the kill.
    Distantly, I saw another angel burst into nothingness at the opposite end of the square, but couldn’t take my eyes off the disaster that was unfolding here, near the stage. The three angels glided in a hunting pack, and now I could tell they’d spotted the gunmen below: there was a sudden decisiveness to their moves, a deadly certainty in the way they banked as one and started plunging downwards.
    The AKs obviously saw it too. There was a flurry of motion in the crowd; a small group of people shoving their way through the throng, panic giving them strength. “Get away, hurry ,” I whispered. My hands were clenched. The gunmen burst out of the other side of the square, and then went racing away down a busy road. They turned into what looked like an alleyway; the three angels headed after them, gliding with an ominous lack of haste.
    Alex swore as he jumped off the car. “The idiots – why are they going for an enclosed space, where they can get backed against a wall? They’re all about to be killed.” He yanked on his helmet.
    I’d already slid off the car behind him and was grabbing for my own helmet. “Can we get through the crowd?” I asked, raising my voice over the sound of the next band that had just come on. The street was full of hundreds of pedestrians milling around, dancing to the music. Lots of them wore angel wings, feathery and surreal in the half-light.
    “We’ve got to,” said Alex shortly.