Angel_ A Maximum Ride Novel - James Patterson [59]
Toni shook her head. “No, Mark! Of course not!” she said quickly. “Rob sent me here with these two! I would never go against your wishes!”
The man turned and looked directly at Angel. He seemed very old, even though his face was smooth and wrinkle free. But there was not that smiling emptiness that Angel had seen in other DG-ers. Angel sensed such pure evil that she held her breath and tried not to flinch.
“No, of course not,” Mark said, smiling like the Cheshire cat. “You believe in the One Light. You want to be part of the solution, not the problem, don’t you, Toni?”
“Yes, Mark,” Toni said frantically. Angel could feel Toni’s terror and saw incoherent orange light glowing menacingly in her mind. “I believe in the One Light. You know I do.”
“Good girl,” said Mark, and Angel felt Toni almost weep with relief.
Toni turned to Angel and Gazzy and pushed them forward. “Show him,” she said. Summoning her courage, Angel stepped closer, urging Gazzy to stay behind her as she carefully opened her wings.
“Oh, that’s good,” Mark almost purred. “That’s very good. Your wings will bring great strength to many of our children.”
Angel wondered just exactly what that was supposed to mean. Especially when the next thing Mark did was to pull a hot, glowing poker from the furnace nearby.
“Let’s see if we can trust you,” he said, moving toward her.
68
THE DOOMSDAY GROUP posters announced that D-day was near, that when the world ended, the new regime would begin.
Why aren’t crazy people content to take over, like, one town? It always has to be the whole world. They can’t just control maybe twenty people. They have to control everyone. They can’t just be stinking rich. They have to be incomprehensibly stinking rich. They can’t just do genetic experiments on a couple unlucky few. They have to put something in the water. In the air. To get everyone.
I was tired of all of it.
But if their claims were true, this could be the worst thing we’d ever come up against. I couldn’t take the chance. What was really getting to me was that since Angel and Gazzy had left yesterday afternoon, we hadn’t heard from them. All sorts of bad scenarios played out in my brain, but I hoped if they’d been harmed, I would somehow know it, feel it.
“What time does the rally start?” Dylan asked.
“You saw the poster. Noon,” I said, my anxiety making me cranky.
His eyes met mine, and his expression told me that he understood, that he didn’t take it personally. Just then I remembered being with him atop the Arc de Triomphe. Being held, being comforted again wouldn’t be such a bad thing right now…. I looked away, angry at myself for thinking like a weak and weepy damsel.
“We should go there early,” said Nudge, fidgeting in her chair. Despite all the baddies and dangers and disasters we’d faced, this one felt different. We were all on edge.
I nodded. “We’ll head there right after breakfast—and try to volunteer.”
Fang’s gang had its own plan; our part was to get jobs at the rally.
By 10:00 a.m., crowds were gathering at the Place de la Concorde. It was a huge plaza and could hold thousands of people. Somehow the DG had gotten permission to close off the traffic circle around the tall pink-marble obelisk that had been a gift from Egypt nearly two hundred years before.
The DG had plastered the place with flyers, promising a wonderful rally, filled with truth, enlightenment, and new beginnings, all starting at noon.
“Truth, enlightenment, and new beginnings? Try mass destruction of humanity!” Dylan sputtered.
I nodded, continuing to scan the area. I saw nothing ominous—and no signs of Angel or Gazzy. How would D-day come about? A bomb? Death rays? A huge meteor that no one expected? So far I wasn’t getting any clues. I felt tense, with a weird sense of foreboding in the pit of my stomach. Still, this could all turn out to be a huge bust. Maybe the DG had overextended itself?
I could only hope.
We found the main stage, where kids were setting up metal barriers to control the crowd. At least six news vans were unloading equipment,