Page 18 of Angel


  Suddenly, my eyes spot a word in bold letters on the paper: EXECUTION.

  And then the huge video displays hanging above the boulevard light up, and everything becomes clear to me. Every pedestrian stops and stands stock-still, and every head turns upward as if there has suddenly been an eclipse.

  On the video screens, a hooded prisoner—small-framed, frail-looking—is kneeling on a starkly lit stage.

  “Wisteria Allgood,” blares a bone-chilling voice, “do you wish to confess to the use of the dark arts for the wicked purpose of undermining all that is good and proper in our society?”

  This can’t be happening. My heart is a big lump in my throat. Wisty? Did that voice really just say Wisteria Allgood? My sister’s on an executioner’s scaffold?

  I grab a slack-jawed adult by his dismally gray overcoat lapels. “Where is this execution happening? Tell me right now!”

  “The Courtyard of Justice.” He blinks at me irritably, as if I’ve woken him from a deep sleep. “Where else?”

  “Courtyard of Justice? Where’s that?” I demand of the man, throwing my hands around his neck, nearly losing control of my own strength. I swear, I’m ready to throw this adult against a wall if I have to.

  “Under the victory arch—down there,” he gasps. He points at a boulevard that runs off to my left. “Let me go! I’ll call the police!”

  I shove him and take off running toward a massive ceremonial arch maybe a half mile away.

  “You! Wait!” he yells after me. “Don’t I know your face from somewhere?”

  He does. Oh yes. And so would everyone else, if they took the time to notice that there was a wanted criminal running loose in their midst.

  But his fellow citizens’ eyes remain glued to the screen. They’ve got an insatiable appetite for malicious gossip of any kind and, of course, an equal taste for senseless death and destruction.

  Even when the falsely condemned are kids. Just kids.

  I can hear a distant roar now. The sound of hunger—for “justice,” for blood.

  I forge ahead into the pathetic herd of lemmings. I’m not going to let them take my sister from me. Not without a fight to the death anyway.

  I round a corner, and then, across the top of the crowd, I see… Is that my sister, Wisty, up on the stage? She’s hooded, dressed all in black, but standing now. Proudly. Brave as ever.

  A man—if you would call him that—is on the stage with her. He’s leaning on a crooked stick, his wickedly sharp black suit hanging strangely motionless in the wind that’s begun to howl through the civic square. His angular face is glowing with smug self-satisfaction, as if he’s just devoured a potful of whipping cream.

  I know him; I despise him. The One Who Is The One. Quite possibly the most evil individual in the history of humanity.

  Are there minutes or seconds left before this hideous execution? I have no way of knowing.

  I knock people aside as I barrel through the thickening, or should I say sickening, throng. I can see a line of well-armed soldiers holding everyone back from the platform. If I can knock one of them down and snatch away a gun…

  I look up at the stage just in time to see The One raise his knobby black stick and shake it menacingly at my sister. He has a look of absolute triumph.

  “No!” I yell, but I’m unheard in the roaring crowd. They all know what’s about to happen. I know, too. I just don’t see how I can possibly stop it. There has to be a way.

  “Nooo!” I scream. “You can’t do this! This is cold-blooded murder!”

  There’s a flash—not of light but somehow of blackness—and she’s gone. Wisty. My sister. My best friend in the world.

  My little sister is dead.

  Whit

  IF I’M STILL DRAWING air, it’s not because I care about living.

  The last person in the Allgood family that I knew for certain to be alive, the person who knew me better than anyone else in the world, the person who looked up to me in everything, is gone. What an incredible waste of an incredible life.

  Wisty died while I watched, and I could do nothing to help her.

  The One just vaporized my sister… and that monster, without any hint of conscience, doesn’t even seem to have broken a sweat. He throws his arms in the air like he’s just scored a goal, like he’s mocking the pointlessness of human existence. I go weak in the knees. I feel as if I might throw up as I hear a deafening roar of approval sweep down the concrete canyon of this city—a place that now seems despicable and evil and beyond repair.

  The One has just achieved his biggest public relations triumph ever. He basks in the adoration—but his usual impatience and anger soon erupt.

  “Silence!”

  His command sweeps across the city, obliterating every other noise.

  But I’m unmoved. Still shell-shocked. Numb everywhere, including in places that I didn’t know existed.

  “My good citizens,” he thunders, without aid of a microphone, “this is a truly magnificent occasion. What you have just witnessed is the obliteration of the last significant threat to our stewardship of the Overworld! Wisteria Allgood, a leader of the Resistance, has just been removed from this dimension. Forever.”

  He raises his arms again, and a new gust of wind brings a thin layer of ash and the horrible smell of burnt hair across the crowd. These “good citizens” begin cheering again.

  I’d collapse to my knees, but I’m surrounded on all sides. Then, suddenly, there is space for me to move. The cheering turns to screaming and the crowd is surging—moving backward—and I see a fiery explosion erupting not fifty yards from where I stand.

  I know that fire.

  “Oh yeah!” I shout as the mere sight of it makes my heart almost burst with joy. “Oh yeah, oh YEAH!”

  That’s my sister! Wisty’s alive! She’s just set herself on fire, and that, believe it or not, is a good thing.

  Wisty

  AS SURE AS I am Wisteria Rose Allgood, I have only one thought: I’m gonna burn everything and everyone around me. Burn it all down.

  I’ll start with the death-drenched stage, move on to this ridiculously pompous plaza, then hit the whole cold city of stone—this disastrous nightmare of a world. Even if I fry myself to ash in the process, I am going to obliterate all of this, all of them.

  The One Who Is The One just killed my friend Margo up on that stage from hell. I recognized her even with a hood over her head. Her purple sneakers and black-and-purple cargo pants were the giveaway. The silver streaks and stars on the sneakers were the final clue. Margo, the last punk rocker on Earth. Margo, the most fearless and dedicated person I’ve ever known. Margo, my dear friend.

  Don’t ask me why that monster in the black silk suit was pretending she was me. All I know is that I’m going to burn that evil madman to cinders.

  So I turn myself into a human torch, just as I have in the past. Only this time I abandon all caution. Suddenly ten-, twenty-, thirty-foot tongues of flame are coursing around me, ripping upward in the formerly cool afternoon air.

  The crowd backs away, screaming, and I can’t help myself: I smile. I nearly laugh out loud.

  And I’m about to turn the heat up another notch—to send jets of fire everywhere around me, to burn brighter and hotter than ever before—when my breath catches in my throat.

  I feel him. I feel his wretched, diseased mind. I feel his eyes somehow locking on to me.

  A thousand soldiers turn my way in unison, and now it’s The One who’s smiling. He’s starting to laugh. And he’s laughing at me.

  I wince as the air rushes out of me. How can he have so much power?

  I have no choice but to run, at least to try to escape his wrath.

  I throw myself into the panicked human tide, my small frame deftly ducking elbows and shoulders. But The One is too close. I can feel his icy gusts chasing me, reaching out with cold, bony finger–like wisps, grazing my face, my neck, sending a chill so cold it hurts everywhere at once.

  I’m starting
to think how ironic it is that a firegirl might die in a deep freeze when suddenly I’m smothered by warmth. Somebody grabs me, lifts me up, and nearly squeezes all the breath out of me.

  Wisty

  IT’S MY BROTHER, Whit.

  In a flash, he carries me a hundred, two hundred paces ahead, as if I weigh nothing. Then he and I duck behind a high stone wall. For a few precious seconds, we’re out of sight and safe.

  I hug Whit with all the strength I have. He finally relaxes his powerful grip enough for me to breathe.

  “But if this is really you…” He trails off.

  “Margo,” I whisper. “He killed Margo.” Then suddenly I’m crying like a baby. I’m shaking, and my teeth chatter hopelessly.

  Margo is dead. The girl who helped me put a third piercing in my ear last week. The girl who woke us all up at five a.m. every morning to report for duty, the girl who had more dedication to fighting the oppression of the New Order than the rest of us put together. She was so young. Just fifteen years old.

  “I told her not to go in that building without more help. I begged her,” my brother says. “Why did she go in there? Why?”

  “She was always the last to give up on a mission,” I remind Whit, as if I’m trying to convince myself that it wasn’t our fault she’d been caught. “First in, last out. That was her mantra, right? Stupid!”

  “Courageous,” he says, and for an instant I see in his eyes why it is that girls love him, why I love him. He’s honest and sincere and absolutely fearless.

  The mission, one of a dozen attempted rescues we’d undertaken in the last month, was our worst failure yet. We were trying to liberate maybe a hundred kidnapped kids from a New Order testing facility. But our intelligence must have been off. Instead of victimized kids, the building held a platoon of New Order soldiers. They were waiting for us.

  “Actually, it’s lucky any of us—,” I start to say.

  “Find her!” The speakers mounted in the plaza start vibrating with The One’s irate voice. “There’s another conspirator in the crowd! She has flaming-red hair! Close the courtyard exits. Capture her now!”

  Whit grabs a gray hat off a passing businessman and plunks it down on my head.

  “Tuck your hair in, quick,” he says.

  I’m doing just that when a policeman spots me. He’s a couple of dozen yards away.

  Now he’s grabbing for the whistle at the end of a cord around his neck… and he’ll soon have the attention of every soldier in the plaza. Not to mention that of The One, whom I hate to mention.

  But then a small black figure leaps up and knocks the policeman down flat on his rear.

  Whit and I exchange looks of surprise. He says, “Did you just—?”

  But before Whit can finish, the black figure—an old woman—is at our side. She presses into my hand a crumpled, gritty piece of paper. “Take it, take it!”

  I swear she’s the weirdest-looking creature I’ve ever seen in my life, and yet I know her from somewhere.

  “Who are—?”

  She cuts me off. “Follow this. Go! I’m a friend. Run. Run. Don’t stop for a single breath, or it’s over. For all of us. Go!”

  Somehow she gets behind us, and then she delivers a kick to both of our butts. That sends us staggering into the surging crowd.

  I immediately turn back… but there’s no sign of her.

  “You heard her,” says Whit. “Go! Now! Go!”

  Table of Contents

  Front Cover Image

  Welcome

  Dedication

  A Preview of The Gift

  To the reader

  Book One:­ The Sky is Falling

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Book Two:­ What’s so Funny ’Bout Peace, Love, and World Destruction­?

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Book Three:­ Paris is Burning

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Epilogue:­ Famous Last Words

  Books by James Patterson

  Copyright

  James Patterson was selected by teens across America as the Children’s Choice Book Awards Author of the Year in 2010. He is the internationally bestselling author of the highly praised Maximum Ride novels, the Witch & Wizard series, Med Head, Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, and the detective series featuring Alex Cross and the Women’s Murder Club. His books have sold more than 205 million copies worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors of all time. He lives in Florida.

  For previews of forthcoming James Patterson books and for more information about the author, go to www.­JamesPatterson.­com.

  Books by James Patterson

  for Readers of All Ages

  The Witch & Wizard Novels

  Witch & Wizard (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)

  The Gift (with Ned Rust)

  The Maximum Ride Novels

  The Angel Experiment

  School’s Out—Forever

  Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

  The Final Warning

  MAX

  FANG

  ANGEL

  The Daniel X Novels

  The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (with Michael Ledwidge)

  Watch the Skies (with Ned Rust)

  Demons and Druids (with Adam Sadler)

  Illustrated Novels

  Daniel X: Alien Hunter (graphic novel; with Leopoldo Gout)

  Daniel X: The Manga, Vol. 1 (with SeungHui Kye)

  Maximum Ride: The Manga, Vol. 1 (with NaRae Lee)

  Maximum Ride: The Manga, Vol. 2 (with NaRae Lee)

  Maximum Ride: The Manga, Vol. 3 (with NaRae Lee)

  For previews of upcoming books in these series and other information, visit www.­WitchAndWizard.­com, www.­MaximumRide.­com, and www.­Daniel-­X.­com.­

  For more information about the author, visit www.­JamesPatterson.­com.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011 by James Patterson

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part o
f this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.­HachetteBookGroup.­com.

  www.­lb-­teens.­com.

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  First eBook Edition: February 2011

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. In the event a real name is used, it is used fictitiously.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-18520-2

 


 

  James Patterson, Angel

  (Series: Maximum Ride # 7)

 

 


 

 
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