Battle Angel by Scott Speer Page A

Sylvester said. “We had to change locations so fast this morning. I was . . . worried.” Sylvester quickly looked up and down the street before pushing the door closed behind him, plunging the outside back into utter darkness.
    Inside, the woman from the street pulled the shawl off her head. It was Archangel Susan Archson, the professor who had encouraged Maddy so much in Guardian training. As she unfurled her hair, her beauty shone full force in the small hallway. Even in this time of crisis, she radiated the mature beauty and charisma for which older female Angels were famous.
    The detective’s breath caught for a moment. Sylvester’s and Susan’s eyes locked.
    “It’s good to see you,” Sylvester said. His eyes flashed behind his glasses, and a slight glow of red appeared on his cheeks.
    “It’s only been since last night at the office,” Susan said, smiling.
    “Like I said,” he said quietly, “I was worried.”
    He turned down the hallway.
    “Down here,” Sylvester said, leading her down a narrow aisle lined with small, unoccupied offices.
    “What’s happened, David?” Susan asked, leaning in close to the detective.
    “What
didn’t
happen, more like it,” Sylvester said. Sylvester’s eyes were heavy with dark rings underneath, and it looked like the last time he’d seen a good night’s sleep was sometime in the previous decade.
    “I wish you’d get some rest, David,” Susan said, concern lining her smooth Angel face.
    “I’ll rest later,” Sylvester said, trying to change the subject. “This morning your tech guy discovered that our private network had been compromised. Someone cracked the first-level encryption, and the National Angel Services would have known our exact location in an hour, two hours at most. We moved out in twenty-eight minutes and came here. A safe house.” Sylvester gestured to the rest of the building.
    Susan lifted an impressed eyebrow and smiled at Sylvester. Smiles were a rare, welcome sight in Angel City these days, and Sylvester savored this one. “Good. But if we’d gone with my emergency plan, it would have taken twenty-
five
minutes,” she said.
    Sylvester paused as he reached a closed door. A thin ribbon of light shone from underneath into the otherwise dim hallway. All was quiet. He opened the door to reveal a hive of activity, which pulled him and Susan in immediately. The formerly unoccupied office—furnished with not much besides a couple of old printers collecting dust in the corner, an overturned rolling office chair, and papers scattered along the floor—had been quickly transformed into a headquarters of sorts. A handful of humans and Angels sat around a long table, fingers running lightning-fast over laptop keyboards. Another group stood clustered around a stack of documents they were examining, slurping coffee. They’d been at it since before dawn.
    Hanging on the wall beside the desk Sylvester had claimed for himself was an enormous map of Angel City, presiding over everything. It was a touch of home for the detective, who had a similar map decorating the wall of his own apartment. Across the map were red circles that marked all the locations of the demon attacks during the first wave, as well as blue dots that represented the isolated attacks on individuals. Of course the detective had started to formulate a theory. But he had been keeping it to himself. For now.
    This was the resistance. A ragtag group of humans and breakaway Angels dedicated to bringing the Immortals into the fight against the demons. Before it was too late.
    Moving under cover of darkness, using every tool it had, the resistance had to evade detection by the Angel authorities as it attempted to grow its network of spies and finally turn the Angels to the group’s side. The Angels were the only chance for Angel City’s survival, if everyone was being honest.
    With the city already reeling after the first attack, supplies were barely trickling into the metropolis, and