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waited lifetimes to reach this point. It set off warning bells in Bitter’s head. “We have enough death,” she said. “Not enough,” Vengeance replied. “I felt what you wanted. Theron. Your leaders. How many humans have died from them?”
“We agree with you. How much peace would their deaths bring?” Before Bitter could even think of a response, Vengeance reared up, and its smoke undulated in strong waves, directed out toward the window, toward Lucille. “We will hunt them. All monsters must die.” “Hold up nuh.” Removing Theron’s power was one thing; killing him was another. “Can’t you just take their money away or something? Redistribute it?” Vengeance slowly turned its scaly head to look at her. “No,” it said. “All monsters must die. The world bathes in evil again and again, no matter how many cleanses are washed through it.
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“Please,” she said, “enough people have died. Don’t make it worse.” Vengeance’s voice softened, and it lowered its head to be level with Bitter’s. “Don’t worry, child. We will make it better.” It sounded like it was trying to be kind, and somehow that made it even more terrifying. “If you hurt people, it’s like I’s the one hurting them, don’t you see? Because I made you.” Vengeance drew its head back sharply. “You did not make me, child. You brought me through.” Half of its eyes flickered. “There is a difference.” Its smoke rippled. “Time passes. The hunt must begin. Will you come?”
“We will never stop! And if they make us all angels, each one of us standing here today, fighting here today, then we will be angels!” This time the crowd’s roar made Bitter’s eardrums ring. She had never heard so many people so ready to die. Ube’s words sent fear skittering through her body. He was calling them angels, and Vengeance’s voice echoed in her head. The language would change, it had said, the world would bend. In the distance, she could hear faint sirens.
“We are each other’s harvest,” he said, his voice soft as he recited the Gwendolyn Brooks lines, and the crowd picked it up, their voices a swelling susurrus. “We are each other’s business,” they chanted as one. “We are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
It opened a mouth full of needled teeth. “Yes,” it said, and its voice was like many voices tightly stitched together. “We know. You are the first gate.”
The creature hummed a low sound. “The world changes when angels return,” it said. “All monsters must die.” Bitter could feel hot tears leaking out of her eyes again. How was she supposed to stop this? How many more of them were here? “I don’t want people to die,” she said. “Full of wants,” the creature said. “Blind with want, what does your world need?” It looked out of the window again, out to Lucille. “Vengeance calls.” It flexed its wings and went translucent, just as Vengeance had in Bitter’s room. “The hunt begins.” As the girls looked on in shock, the creature took flight, its body
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“Vengeance,” Bitter whispered, shocked to see it outside of the shape she’d painted it in. The angel turned its face to her, eggshells clacking in its neck. It was so terribly foreign in this world, it distorted reality with its presence.
Bitter took a curious step forward. “Why you shape so?” she asked, gesturing with her hands. “Like a person?” Vengeance dragged its blank gaze over the gathered Assata kids. “It makes it easier for humans who are not gates.”
On the other hand, Vengeance was there. Vengeance was there, in half its force and righteous rage, and
she couldn’t wish or hope or paint it away, or pretend that it hadn’t told her exactly what it was planning to do. Her blood was still a faint brown crust along the edge of its mouth.
Vengeance had called itself an angel, and so had the creature in Alex’s studio, but Bitter was having a hard time accepting that.
Vengeance glanced at him. “We came from the gates,” it said. “Eucalyptus leaks divinity. The threshold opens with blood.”
Bitter stepped in. “They need blood to come through.” Ube’s eyes flicked between her and Alex. “These…things came through your work?” Blessing pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “Dammit,” she said. “That’s why it mentioned Eucalyptus. That’s how they’re getting here, through everyone’s pieces at school.”
Vengeance rumbled in its stretched throat, a deep and jagged sound. “Song and story,” it said, “blood and anger.”
“You are human,” Vengeance countered. “We can get you to do many things. There are things happening tonight that you know nothing of.” It glanced over at Bitter. “Tell them the truth. It is not complicated.” Bitter worried at her lip, feeling the metal of her ring against her teeth. “I called it,” she said. “I wanted help. I wanted all this to
stop, so I painted it and then I called it through. But I eh know it was going to be like this!”
Vengeance remained unbothered. “Worlds burn when the angels return. All monsters must die.”
As Hibiscus spoke, Vengeance wrapped itself around him like a wraith, its smoke passing harmlessly through the boy’s flesh, so it looked like they had become one terrible thing together. Instead of frightening Hibiscus, it seemed to fortify him. His voice grew even more certain, more steady. “We can end this. We can topple those in power out of their seats and reclaim Lucille for the people, at whatever cost. There cannot be one more death, one more person lost in our fight for freedom. Since they will not give us justice, we must take it!” Vengeance’s scaled head snaked high above Hibiscus,
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are here to help you. We are here to protect you. You are the innocent, and we will be your shield. We will hunt together, human and angel. The world will burn, and from its ashes a glorious morning will arise.”
There was something behind his eyes, something as dark as a lost ocean. “How do you stop an angel?” he asked. He looked out at the faces of the Assata kids, the brightness of hope illuminating them one by one like a spreading fire. “I think we are already too late.”
“They’re calling themselves angels,” Ube replied. “And when they say hunt, they mean that they are going to commit murder.” He swept his gaze over the group. “My question to y’all is, do you want that blood on your hands?” “You talking like it’s regular people who are going to die,” Hibiscus interjected. “We’re talking monsters. We’re talking Dian Theron. You gonna defend that man’s life?”
Vengeance unwound itself from Hibiscus and slithered over to Bitter, settling beside her. “Is this how you humans decide things?” it asked her. “All this talking.” “We take life seriously,” she snapped. “Why?” Bitter shot a glare at the angel. “What the hell you mean, why?” “What is a monster’s life? How many lives have these monsters taken? How many lives will the hunt save?”
Ube’s voice was a thin blade slicing from his tongue—even the air drew away from the sharp edge. “First of all, keep my mama out your mouth,” he said.
Ube kept talking. “Second of all, none of us have the right to decide when to end another person’s life! That is not justice.”
Vengeance’s voice rumbled through the space. “The angels kill the monsters. Let the blood be on us.”
The angel looked down at him and stretched its mouth into that terrible smile. “Welcome, little hunter,” it said, then it looked at the
Bitter wanted to speak up, but she knew she had no right to, not in this space, not even though she’d painted Vengeance into existence, called it into being, and set off this whole cascade. Assata lived in a different world, one of blood and death and unlikely hope, and that was the world the angels had come for. Bitter was just the gate, someone on the border. Who was she to tell them not to seek justice for everyone who had been lost, especially when this looked like the only way justice was ever going to be served? It felt heavy, inevitable, like an avalanche with an old grudge. None of
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Vengeance hummed an amused sound. “We travel for the hunt,” it explained. “Through time
and space. The humans will be safe.”
It was Vengeance who broke the thick and sudden silence, its cool voice slithering through the atrium as it snaked its neck toward Ube. “Would you like to be healed, child?”
Ube stared back at the angel, his face blank. “What?” Vengeance reached a long smoky limb out to the boy, yellow eyes intent. “So you may walk.” Bitter could almost feel Alex’s hackles rise as she took a step toward the angel, her fists tight. Ube flinched and moved away from Vengeance’s reach. “No!” he said. “Why would you even ask that?” Alex cut in sharply. “There is nothing wrong with Ube,” she said, and the rest of the Assata kids murmured in agreement, even Hibiscus. The angel’s eyes flickered between the humans. It seemed confused. “He does not wish to be whole?”
Blessing put her hand to her mouth, aghast. The air in the room was sharp now, tense. Alex took a deep, furious breath, but Ube shook his head slightly at her and swiveled his chair around, bringing himself up to the angel. Vengeance towered above him, inhuman and terrifying, but Ube’s face was calm. When he spoke, his voice rolled through the space like the night sky w...
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Ube wasn’t backing down, not even with the angel’s many eyes fixed intently on him. “I am already whole,” he repeated, his voice softer, more intimate, as if he was telling Vengeance a secret. A taut moment of silence passed before Vengeance reared back and up, its smoke glitching. “Yes,” it said. “I understand now.” It regarded Ube thoughtfully. “You humans are…unpredictable.”
Tenderness radiated from Miss Bilphena like warm light stealing through the room. Bitter could feel all the Assata kids turn to it like new leaves to the sun, relief dropping their shoulders and loosening their necks.
“Tea is kind of a house ritual,” Alex explained as she led them down the hall and around the corner into the den. “Everyone gathers in the den and we take a minute to just…sit with each other.”
There was something about the Assata safe house that reminded Bitter of Eucalyptus and Miss Virtue, that spirit of a space that was designed for the lost ones, the abandoned ones, designed to hold them safe and tell them they never had to leave again.
“That’s exactly my point!” Aloe burst out. “You started this whole angel thing, and fine you didn’t tell me because it’s a big deal and you turned to your girls like I’m not part of your crew, but we can talk about that later. But whether you like it or not, you are at the center of this, and that’s what got you into Assata, and you don’t even care. You don’t want to hunt, you don’t want to be part of it, and it’s not fair, because I’ve been out there with them on the front lines, I’m the one who patches them up, and I didn’t even get a chance to decide if I wanted to go with the angels!” Too
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her hands over her mouth. “Wait, no—” Aloe’s jaw was tight. “No, it’s fine. You said what you meant.”
She had called the angels through. If they couldn’t be stopped, that was blood on her hands, and Bitter had no idea how she could stay sane after something like that. She wasn’t Assata—she hadn’t been prepared for frontline costs.
“We’ve known that the other realms are real for a long time. We’ve called on them for
centuries, for millennia, since and before our ancestors were taken over the deep water. We can ask spirit for shielding and protection, and in this case, to keep the safe house unseen in the eyes of Lucille. Sunflower has been masking the house for more years than even I know. Trust me, child, it cannot be breached.” “Except by angels,” Aloe pointed out.
He was whole under her hands, and they were together and safe for now.
Miss Virtue scalded them all with one dragging look. “No, what I tend to frown upon is when they call angels through into Lucille en masse.” Her voice was a razor blade made of ice, and it froze the air in the kitchen immediately.
agbada
They both looked out of place in the Assata kitchen, both with a sharpness to them that was perhaps just the edge of power making itself known.
“It’s the angels,” Miss Virtue replied. “They’re fond of fire as a symbol, a cleansing. With the new day comes a new world.”
Miss Virtue was looking at her intently. “But you didn’t volunteer? Even though you called out the first one?” Bitter bristled. “I eh know it was going to be like this!” “Yes, people rarely do when they pray.” Miss Virtue tapped a marbled nail against the table. “So—they’re hunting.” “It wasn’t a prayer,” Bitter objected. The woman’s gray eyes skimmed over her. “Wasn’t it?” she retorted, but she didn’t wait for Bitter’s answer. “Based on what you told them or what the others might have told them, who do you think they will kill first?”
“Vengeance said it would never hurt me!” Bitter’s voice sounded futile even to her own ears. “You are a gate. It cannot hurt you.”
Bitter feel a little more anchored, like a piece of Eucalyptus was with her, like nothing could happen to her because the promises Miss Virtue made to her students extended through space and time, and it meant that Bitter would always be safe close to her.
