Battle Angel by Scott Speer

everyone by utter surprise. But now they knew what the demons were capable of, and they knew more were coming. Many more, an untold number. Each one capable of causing unimaginable havoc and bloodshed equal to a major natural disaster.
    The city staggered under the constant threat of demons. Evacuation routes had been totally destroyed, the supplies had all but stopped coming in, and the demons kept waging random terrorist attacks. But the worst part was the waiting: Why wouldn’t the demons just get it over with?
    Maddy walked in darkness to her desk and found the candle and matches she always kept ready. With a spark against the rough strip along the box, the match head flared and lit. She brought the flame to the wick of the candle, hot wax drips falling onto the desk as it caught. The flickering flame cast her face in a warm yellow-orange, the corners of the room still lingering in darkness.
    The city would wake to another morning under siege. At this point they were waiting, helpless, for the next demon assault. Any plans the city had ever made for emergencies proved to be worse than useless under the stress of a demon invasion, and instructions that looked good on paper turned to chaos and panic as soon as an actual emergency occurred. And now those who remained barricaded themselves behind boarded-up windows. They stayed inside, rationing food and water, waiting for the inevitable main strike from the demon army just lying off the coast.
    The demons knew what they were doing, in the most terrible way—they were trying to crush Angel City’s spirit before they even fully invaded.
    Maddy sighed and tried not to brood. The night was still long. No rays of dawn cut through the darkness outside.
    But it had been two days, and she still hadn’t heard from Tom. A brief message had arrived via navy messenger that he was alive after the first wave, and she knew the navy had been fighting isolated battles near the sinkhole itself these past few days, but communications were spotty. And she still couldn’t focus on his frequency.
    To top everything off, Maddy felt so useless just sitting here in Angel City. She’d never been trained for battle of any kind. But was she really just supposed to wait for the next full attack and hope she managed to grab onto a frequency of someone to save? Then she thought of Tom out there, willing to risk his life every day. . . .
    And then sometimes she would think of Jackson. Stupid, silly stuff, like the way he’d tickle her when they argued about something to get her to laugh. And then, just like that, a sea of sadness would wash over her, and she’d have to go do something else, anything else, before she got sucked down too deep. Having to worry about Tom was hard enough; to sit and ponder Jacks every day was too much for her heart to handle.
    Maddy lay back down on her bed, but it seemed hopeless that sleep would come. She turned over on her side and scanned her bookshelf for something to read.
    • • •
    She woke up curled on the couch. Early morning light streamed in through the window. It couldn’t have been later than 6:30. Mercifully, she’d fallen asleep reading in the living room after going downstairs. The flashlight she’d used to light her book had fallen to the floor, and the novel was open, facedown on her chest.
    The old cream-colored phone was ringing. Groggy from sleep, Maddy had to reach and stumble to even find it where it was stuck under a stack of magazines on the lowest shelf of the side table by the couch. Because of cell phones, which had stopped working after the first assault, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d heard the landline ring.
    “Hello?”
    “Maddy?” said the voice on the other end. “You’re there? You’re really there?”
    “Tom,” she said in a rush of relief. “You’re all right.”
    “I’m okay. I’m okay,” Tom said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for so long, Maddy.”
    Maddy let the relief