Her tentacles whisked around her, smashing desks into pieces, slamming against the metal filing cabinets that lined the walls, and slapping rubble into dust. She was searching. Seeking. Sounds and scents and vibrations climbed through their lengths and into her spine, giving her a rough mental vision of her surroundings even before her eyes could adjust. Shadows scattered everywhere as she raised her burning fist.

She knew where the ruined office desks and chairs were. Where the rubble-crushed things lay, the metal bars sticking out. She even felt the cocoon, and she stepped off the desk to crush it beneath her feet. It crunched. Something thick and creamy oozed out like melted cheese, and the scent reminded her of how everything tasted like batteries when she'd messed around with an electromagnet and shocked herself.

Nothing was alive. That much was clear. Nothing she could slaughter. Nothing she could drain. There had been bodies here. She saw the smeared streaks of blood, the bloody handprints glistening by her firelight.

There were no signs of her babies. She was sure she'd seen them sucked into the crumbling floor and was hoping they'd be waiting for her. Which was strange, because they weren't even really her babies, but still she'd hoped. It would've been comforting. And now she wondered if proximity to the Desecrated Angel had turned their allegiance over.

The door of the office was off its hinges, cracked on the floor like a broken bridge between the office and the hallway. The surrounding wall was mostly collapsed, and cracks jutted through whatever was left standing. The mist seemed to be thicker down here, swirling all around her and shrouding her vision just as the smoke had upstairs.

Jenny moved slowly, leaving the wreckage of the office behind her. To her left were more offices, the guidance counselor rooms, and the health office where they handed out free condoms. The hall curved around the building, leading into the gym locker rooms.

To her right was the rest of the hall beneath the physics hallway, and at the end of it was the stairwell Susan and Mrs. Monique and her babies had taken to the third floor.

Directly ahead was the large central hall of the basement. It was lined with lockers, but large doors on the right side opened into the cafeteria. Along the left wall was the entrance to the gym. She adjusted her grip on her hatchet, tentacles at full alert for any sign of danger. She saw bloody streaks, footprints and hand prints, and the eerie quiet reminded her of the second floor. When she'd been searching for Oliver and found bodies missing, and then discovered Miriam stuck in the closet. But this time she knew the bodies in the basement hadn't been dragged away. They'd gotten up themselves.

But where? Shouldn't they be coming after her? Wasn’t that why they’d been resurrected?

Her tentacles expanded as far as they could go, undulating as they sensed for any sign of anything. Any disturbance in the thick air of the veil. Any sound. Any scent. But all that came back was the metallic scent of blood, the ashes clinging to the blood drying on her scales, and...

A strange feeling she couldn't quite place at all. It was like walking into the apartment, and there was a hint of an odd odor, or maybe a sound that didn't belong, or something was out of place. Like the feeling she'd get when she knew her mother had been through her bedroom, shuffling through her stuff. She'd know right away something was wrong. Her stomach would tigthen. Her heart would quicken, anxiety like teeth sinking into her chest.

It was like when she was in middle school, she'd come home from school and there'd be an empty bottle of something foul-smelling. Her mom would be waiting with a hanger or a wooden spoon, and Jenny would know she'd done something wrong.

Her mother would devolve into screaming fits and attack, and Jenny would try not to cry or scream because that'd only make things worse. And all the while, Jenny would go through everything in her mind, desperately trying to figure out the problem, trying to fix it in any way possible.

That was how Jenny felt, frozen in the hallway, eyes shut, using her tentacles to their fullest. She ran her tongue over her new teeth, barely daring to breathe. She squeezed her hatchet's handle. She wasn't powerless, she reminded herself. She was a monster now. A monster who wanted blood. I’m the one hunting. They should be terrified of me.

Her heart wouldn't stop thudding violently. Something was definitely wrong. But what?

The feeling emanated from her right, from the cafeteria. Something terrible. She knew the Desecrated Angel must be in there. But by now she’d memorized the dread she associated with it. A mixture of disgust and anger. No, this was something else. There was something else in there. Something the angel was doing or creating... It was trying to end the Survival Challenge after all. Her scales bristled. She was feeling more and more tense, expecting something to attack any moment now, and then a faint cry shivered through the tension.

It was so faint, she’d only felt its slight vibration through her tentacles. A cry laced with agony and fear, but it wasn’t coming from the cafeteria, but from the opposite direction. From behind her, in the gym.

She focused every sense, her tentacles reaching for the doors. For a second, she thought it was the angel messing with her. Making a sound to draw away her attention before it attacked, but she knew she'd have to check. What if someone was hurt? It hadn’t sounded like the moans or wails of the undead; she’d heard that enough times to know exactly what that felt like.

It was just like with Miriam. A little sound. Something out of place. What if someone was hiding in the locker rooms? Or under the bleachers? She knew there was a secret space inside them when the teachers rolled them up against the wall. She'd dropped her phone in there one time. Someone could easily be hiding in there.

Making up her mind, and trying to convince herself she wasn't chickening out from facing the Desecrated Angel, she pushed the latch and stepped into the declining hall that led to the gym.

Her burning hand revealed the bloody smears on the wall. Again, no bodies, but she saw an arm wriggling. The fuzzy pink cloth of some cute sweater wrapped around it. Red flesh glistened on the opposite end. The fingers were crawling toward her. Jenny knelt and held the hand. She would never know whom it belonged to. And the fingernails scraped the red covering of her burning palm, but the flames devoured the severed limb till nothing remained but ash. Jenny kept going, descending further underground until she got to the double doors that opened into the gym.

The doors had glass windows in them, and her heart nearly stopped at the sight.

It was utter destruction. The bleachers that lined the leftmost wall were torn apart and smashed in several places. Craters covered the walls, cracks spread between them. There must’ve been a massive fight here. Were these the explosions she’d heard earlier? The hardwood floor was littered with debris, chunks of the ceiling and bookshelves, but what made her want to scream was the sight above. The gym was right beneath the library.

The gym was built deeper into the ground than the rest of the basement, giving it higher ceilings. But something had managed to tear through it anyway. Ugly gashes left lights swinging from their cables like vines and exposed the library above. She could still see some bookshelves and tables that hadn’t fallen through, but no sign of any of the people that had been there.

Jenny shoved the door open so hard, the glass shattered and the heavy metal door sailed across the basketball court to lodge itself into a crater on the opposite wall. Dust rained down.

Tentacles swishing like mad, Jenny rushed through the gym, stomping debris into nothing with her claws, searching for any sign of Oliver or Dr. Lee, or any of the others. She came to a stop halfway across the gym, turning this way and that. The large windows were shattered, and there was a body stuck in the glass, wriggling and failing to get free. Jenny stared at the bloody creature and realized it was an undead angel since it was naked and no notification turned up. Blue eyes shone against the gloomy backdrop of the veil, and the pathetic sight only made Jenny angrier.

She sensed a shift in the air behind her, a slight breeze, and turned to see a gaping hole in the wall near the corner to her right. Something had burst through the bricks, exposing the weight room where dumbbells and equipment were twisted and scattered. And through the opposite wall of the weight room was another hole, leading into the hallway Jenny had just stepped into the gym from.

If she’d walked further down the hallway, she would’ve seen the hole from the outside. Something had come through the walls to get here, and Jenny knew it had to have been the Desecrated Angel. It dug its way through the basement to get to the library, the biggest source of remaining, living human blood in the building. That's what she would've done too.

Her heart sank. She smashed a bookshelf into bits of wood with a tentacle. The library was supposed to be a safe place! She’d sent Oliver and the others there... but there was no sign of them here. And had Susan made it there with Miriam? What if they’d died from the fall? The gym was double the height of any hallway or room. What if they'd been dragged into the gym and butchered only to awaken with glowing blue eyes? Had her worst fear come true?

She cried out in frustration, but it was muffled by her exoskeleton mask. The basketball nets were broken. The glass backboards shattered, and the pole was bent backward, as though the angel had used it to climb higher before reaching the ceiling. She grabbed a desk, recognizing it as the heavyset librarian’s desk, and chucked it at the windows. It twirled, spilling books and paper before colliding with the undead angel and rocketing into the veil, vanishing from sight.

She heard the faint cry again, this time hearing it with her ears. Breathing hard and trying not to panic, Jenny scanned every inch of the debris. Maybe someone had survived. Maybe the Desecrated Angel wasn’t able to get everyone. That was when she spotted something bright orange and glistening, and her blood ran cold. It was the covering of an Imperfect Angel.

It was trapped under a chunk of ceiling, a metal rod piercing through its back. The creature was missing an eye, but it reached for Jenny with a fingerless hand, crying and covered in blood.

Jenny approached it fuming with rage. Her arm burned harsher and harsher till the flames towered over her. Her tentacles writhing, she was just about to smack its head into the floor and crush its skull when the notification registered:

Angel (stage ii) (level 10)

She stopped walking. She glared at the creature, a tentacle hovering over its orange forehead. Its eyes weren't blue. And the notification made no sense. An angel? Stage ii? But it looked exactly like the Imperfect Angels... and then Jenny noticed that its one eye wasn’t white and empty. An orange pupil stared back at her.

Was this... Was this like the opposite of her severed spirit? The creature struggled, and it raised its arm again, and Jenny got the distinct feeling it was begging for help. Pleading. But its struggling caused the rubble to shift. The creature cried out, banging the floor with its palm before spitting up blood. Fresh blood.

The scent hit Jenny as though she'd slammed into it with Instant Acceleration. Saliva pooled in her mouth. Her stomach twisted. She tried to keep away even as her feet moved on their own. Her tentacles drifted forward, curious, hesitant despite the unceasing hunger clawing at her insides. A small part of her was struggling to hold back. Don’t kill this one. It’s different. She could feel her heart throbbing in her brain, like her mind would fall apart if she didn't have at least one slurp of blood.

And then the angel spoke.

A hissing shush, that sounded more like a snake spitting, cut through the agonizing thirst like her hatchet through flesh. A shudder flickered up her spine; she’d heard the angel with her ears, her eyes, and her tentacles. A language that spoke with its entire body.

Jenny dropped to her knees, the hardwood cracking beneath her from the impact. The angel had touched its palm to Jenny's trembling tentacle, and the hissing climbed like electricity. Like she'd touched a live wire. Color and light burst through her head. It was like she'd been hiding in the dark for hours and hours before stumbling into daylight.

She found herself falling. Falling from the sky... no. She was falling toward the sky. She was flying!

She was flying. Her tentacles were gone, replaced instead with enormous wings that shimmered in the warm sunlight. She counted four wings in total, two on each side, each one about as large as her upper body and beating in sync.

Little scales fluttered away with each heavy wingbeat, catching the light and sending rainbows circling every which way. She ascended, higher and higher nearing the clouds, and that's when she saw them. Towers of glass. Except they weren't like any of the towers she was accustomed to seeing walking around Manhattan.

These weren't built upward. Instead, they hung from the underbellies of clouds, jutting downward. Rows upon rows in neat geometric patterns. This must be the world of angels. These must be their structures, their cities.

But how was she seeing this? Feeling this?

This wasn't anything at all like the times Eve had shown her visions. This was... real. Like she was actually there, the wind curling beneath her wings. The sun soaking into her... it wasn't exactly flesh. She looked down to see her form, womanly, but instead of skin, there was only shifting orange light. Her arm looked like Susan's had when she'd been brought back to life. Her red covering, her scales, everything was gone.

Warm wind rose from underneath her, propelling her higher and higher. The nearest city, the nearest group of towers, hanging like stalagmites, grew closer and closer. Jenny realized she was inside the angel's mind. She was seeing what the angel saw. Feeling what the angel felt.

Countless other angels fluttering around the towers. Climbing into hexagonal windows and vanishing inside. It was almost exactly like watching crowds of people crossing streets back home. The towers seemed to be made of glass, but they weren't see-through, and she wondered about their community. Their culture. Did angels have to go to school too? Every single one of them shimmered, and as Jenny drew nearer, she noticed that their light was always shifting. Sometimes green, sometimes blue and purple, changing as they beat their large wings and flew around the towers.

Joy bubbled inside her. She was home. This was home.

And then a shadow swept across the cities, churning them into dark angry storm clouds. A sound like a blaring trumpet, loud and painful, the sound of the sky ripping apart, shook everything. Towers crumpled and collapsed, sinking away from the clouds, and Jenny glanced down to see the world open beneath them like a mouth. Angels plummeted like shooting stars, their lights trailing behind them in fading sparks.

Her heart broke. Her ears bled; the blaring sound continued assaulting her. Her wings beat desperately. She struggled to stay afloat. And that was when a voice, a voice with the texture of sandpaper scraping against her skull, forced its way into her head and demanded she fall.

 

 

---

 

i've been dealing with some delightful medical stuff and doctor's appointments and ugh.... i got some not-so-great news about my health (and why im struggling so much to gain weight) and it's been eating away at my brain. 

and like also, it's left me with posting paralysis - i've just been feeling so weak and afraid :( which is dumb and annoying. but i've at least managed to write lots! im trying to edit and get them to you ASAP. 

so a bunch of stuff coming your way soon. 

love you 

patreon's up to chapter 58 now! https://www.patreon.com/posts/angels-chapter-89249865