Authors: Scott Nicholson
“Fly away home,” she said.
She was only dimly aware of the
wings sprouting from her shoulder blades. They flapped almost of their own
accord, and she was lifting away before she realized she was flying. She
gripped Luke’s wrist for a second, hanging on to the ground in futile
resistance, and then she was torn away by the wind.
Sabrina cast one brief glance down
at Luke, who snarled in what must have been encouragement. She flapped her
wings and covered fifteen feet of altitude, and unfurled them once again to
propel herself toward the belfry.
Below her, Cherry screamed in
shock and surprise. “Sabrina! What…what the hell are you doing?”
“Ruining your date,” she said, and
then she oriented herself against the angles of the church. She hadn’t had much
practice at flying. Luke had taken her up to Kitty Hawk and they’d engaged in
some pre-dawn test runs before lapsing into sandy frolicking, and she had
tested her wings inside Luke’s house.
But she’d never flown with
purpose, not since she’d awoken in the memorial gardens of the old Beaufort
cemetery and found she was no longer dead.
Flying with purpose proved much
more difficult than merely gliding on the sea breeze at Kitty Hawk, and the
wings didn’t seem to work in unison. She gave another flap and tilted wildly to
the right, twenty feet off the ground.
Roy didn’t seem to notice her,
because he was still intent on whatever lay on the far horizon. His flares were
burning down, but still he waved them, and she wondered how many flares Luke
had stored on the boat. Knowing Luke, there could have been enough to run a
lighthouse.
“Two if by sea!” Roy shouted into
the teeth of the keening wind.
Sabrina flapped her wings again
and veered even further to the right, now leveling off and losing altitude.
Your right wing is stronger,
which makes sense, because you’re right-handed.
She gave a softer push with the right
wing, feeling the way the mechanics torqued into her muscular system, and gave
two quick, hard beats of her left wing. She found herself balancing out and she
thrust out her chest and threw her head back, nosing up so that she was again
pointed at the belfry.
Learning on the fly. Heh. Lame
angel humor.
She thought she had the flying gig
down, but her confidence caused her right wing to regain its natural dominance.
This time when she veered, the tip of her left wing banged against the side of
the church, causing her to drop.
She somehow managed a midair
somersault and spread her wings to break her fall. Still, she landed hard on
her feet and nearly rolled into a crash landing.
Cherry ran over to her. “Oh my
God, Sabrina. You got wings.”
“Yeah, it’s a flight harness—”
“What are you, like some sort of
government experiment?” Cherry tugged on one of the wings. “Is this a robot
backpack or something you’re testing for the Coast Guard?”
“Yeah,” Sabrina said. “Top secret.
Which means I’ll have to kill you, if we’re lucky enough to survive this.”
Cherry gave a nervous laugh. “I
knew there was something fishy about Luke. He’s with the CIA, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. But don’t tell anyone,
okay?”
“National security, right?”
“Right,” Sabrina said.
“What’s up with Roy?”
“He’s three beers short of a
six-pack, if you know what I mean.” Sabrina used her feathers to brush the sand
from her skin
;
gazing up to make sure Roy hadn’t
caught the church on fire.
“Those wings are so realistic,”
Cherry said. “It’s amazing what they can do with plastics these days.”
“Sabrina!” Luke yelled. “What are
you waiting for?”
“Go take care of him,” Sabrina
said to Cherry. “He’s got an ouchie.”
Rolling to her feet, Sabrina got a
running start and spread her wings again. This time she caught the breeze and
soared like a kite past the belfry. She just had time to glance inside and see
Roy’s twisted, leering face lit by the flares.
Then she was fighting the wind,
which had gained force, and she had to beat her wings furiously just to stop
her ascent. If she had kept gliding, she would have been blown past the
opposite edge of the island to the sound.
The sky was darker now, the moon
nearly obscured by the gathering clouds. A storm was definitely gathering
offshore, a black morass boiling on the horizon, lightning throwing violet
streaks against the sea.
Come on, wings. Flap, damn you
.
CHAPTER
NINE
Angel wings were supposedly a gift
of God, but now Sabrina wondered if they were yet another example of His universal
humor. An eternal being probably grew quite bored eventually, so tricking an
angel might be a great way to pass the time. She might be just a kite or a yoyo
to Him, an idle toy.
But the wings were hers now, and
she was going to use them.
She beat them until she discovered
the proper balance, stroking harder with the left to compensate for its
relative weakness. By the time she’d completed three circles in the dark sky,
she felt aerodynamically sound enough to aim for the church below.
The flares were bright enough to
light up not only the belfry, but the perimeter of the churchyard as well. On
the ground, Cherry was tending to Luke, which caused a flutter of jealousy in
Sabrina’s chest.
Oh Lord, what if she sees his
fangs? That will be harder to explain than the wings
.
But she pushed those thoughts
aside to concentrate on her mission. Even though she wasn’t quite sure what the
mission
was
.
Sabrina flapped against the
buffeting wind until she was hovering just outside the belfry. Roy held the
sparking stumps of flares in each hand. A canvas bag beside him was filled with
more flares, and she couldn’t be sure, but she thought he had a SCUBA diver’s
spear gun slung over one shoulder.
“Roy, put down the flares,” she
said, with as much command as she could muster. Those flares looked hot, and
God had warned her that fire was her one weakness—because fire was the element
of the devil.
Roy’s eyes were wild and watery,
the burning light sparking against them and making him look demonic and insane.
“You’re flying,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I knew you were something weird.
I could smell it.”
“I’m weird? I’m not the one
lighting flares in an abandoned church belfry and waving and yelling like
crazy.”
“I’m on a mission from God,” Roy
said.
Hey, that’s MY line.
“I
don’t
think God would want you burning down a church.”
“I’m doing my sacred duty,” Roy
said.
“Put down the flares,” she said,
beating her wings so that she hovered ten feet away from the belfry.
“Sure thing, Blondie,” he said,
hurling both flares at her. One rolled along her left wing, raising a steaming
stench as it scorched her feathers. She didn’t feel any pain from that one, but
the next flare bounced against her boobs and sizzled a moment before she spun
it loose.
Hovering, she glanced down at her
cleavage. The hot flames had left a red welt in the shape of a vee. She didn’t
register the agony right away, but felt a deep disappointment at the marred
flesh. God had done a pretty good job giving her a heavenly form, and now it
would have a scar.
Female vanity. Even death
doesn’t erase it.
But that was for later. For now,
she was pissed at Roy, who somehow seemed even more Neanderthal. In the dark,
he appeared hunched and thick, as if he had bulked up and become bloated with
Budweiser.
“What are you waiting for?” Luke
yelled from below, his voice thin.
“Those wings sure look real,”
Cherry said.
Something glinted in the belfry
and Sabrina realized Roy was trying to light another flare. “Drop it,” she
shouted.
The flare sparked to life and
radiated Roy’s sickening grin, which somehow seemed a foot wide. “You sure you
want me to drop it?”
Sabrina didn’t want to be
responsible for burning down a church, even a Methodist church. She fluttered
around the belfry, Roy spinning in place to track her movements. Then he began waving
the flare again, gibbering in tongues.
When he turned to look out at the
stormy sea, she adjusted the angle of her wings and gave a strong stoke,
hurtling toward him from behind. She accelerated faster than she had planned
and barely had time to fold her wings before she hit the opening to the belfry.
She struck Roy flush in the back, and it was like ramming into a chimney.
Roy let out an
urk
and the
flare skittered from his hand, rolling toward the opening where the bell rope
descended. He pitched forward onto his hands and knees.
Shaken, Sabrina flopped onto the
hard wooden boards.
Great. Now what?
The wound in her chest burned like
the memory of a lost love, and she wondered how much fire it would take to
disable her. Oh, she couldn’t die again, God had promised her that, but she
didn’t know what would happen if she were burned at the stake or something.
Would her ashes just lay there on the ground for all eternity?
Roy reached up and grabbed the ledge,
lifting himself. With his free hand, he pulled the strap of the spear gun until
it fell into his hand. The fallen flare quit sparking, but its dull glow lit
the belfry and gave Roy’s face a sinister red tint.
“Feet of clay,” she said, the
magic words that made the wings retract. Nothing happened.
Must be the burn, damaging your
powers.
Sabrina rolled over, unable to
fold her wings. In such cramped quarters, the wings were a major disadvantage,
especially if she had to dodge high-powered spears at close range.
Sabrina calculated her options. A
trap door to the left gave way to darkness, and she imagined crude rungs nailed
to the wall to form a ladder. No way could she fit in there with her wings at
full mast. She could leap out of the belfry, but she wasn’t sure her wings
would work well enough to fly. Or she could sweet-talk him.
She reached for the bell rope and
pulled herself to her feet.
“So,” she said. “Nice view up
here, huh?”
Roy thrust the tip of the spear
gun toward her. In the dim light, she saw that the tip wasn’t made of metal.
No, it was a jagged length of wood, probably pulled from the interior of the
church when he’d broken in.
“I hate angels,” he said. “But
there’s one thing I hate more.”
“Politicians?”
He snarled. “Vampires.”
He turned and peered over the
ledge to the ground, where Cherry was tending to Luke. In fact, she was tending
him quite closely. She’d removed his shirt and was checking his abdomen for
bruises.
Great, next she will be giving
him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
.
“How did you know he was a
vampire?”
“The same way he knew what I was.
We’ve been dancing a long time.”
“Lucky you. I can’t even get him
to do the cha-cha.” She gripped the rope, feigning weakness and letting her
body go limp.
“Look at him down there,” Roy
said. “How much longer before he rips into your friend’s neck? Disgusting.”
“If you knew he was a vampire, why
did you come out here with us?”
“You really are an innocent,
aren’t you?” Roy glanced at her, smirking.
“I have my moments,” she said
defiantly.
“I can smell him on you, his
depraved and lustful scent fouling your self-righteous body.” Roy’s voice had
changed, the boozy frat-boy tone now deep and growly. “I can’t believe God
would grant wings to the likes of you. But that just shows that God is weak, and
the time of the Gog is at hand.”
“Dude, you’re talking like a
killer clown in a bad horror movie,” Sabrina said, although she couldn’t help
noticing again the ominous similarity between “God” and “Gog.”
“This is no business of His, or of
yours.”
“Okay. Put down the pointy thingy
and we’ll all be friends.” Sabrina didn’t like the way Roy shifted the spear
gun to the ledge, aiming it down at Luke and Cherry.
“Too late for that, Sabrina
Vickers,” Roy said.
“Oh, so we’re getting all formal
now, huh? Is that in the bad-guy handbook or something?”
Roy raised the spear gun to his
cheek and sighted down its length. Below, Luke was now in a sitting position,
Cherry comforting him by smoothing his hair and whispering into his ear, or
maybe kissing it.
“One to the heart should do it,”
Roy said.
“Except for one thing,” Sabrina
said.
“What?” Roy said without turning.
“His heart belongs to me.”
She yanked back on the rope,
causing the old brass bell to clang. The reverberation shook the belfry and staggered
Roy for a moment as he cupped one hand to the side of his head.
Sabrina leaned back, tugged the
slack from the rope, and then flexed her wings behind her as she swung toward
Roy like Tarzan on a jungle vine.
CHAPTER
TEN
Sabrina tried to scream “Geronimo”
but she didn’t have much of a swing. However, it was enough to get Roy to turn
toward her. Her feet caught him flush in the ribs and knocked the spear gun
from his hand. It tumbled over the ledge to the ground.
The bell rang again as Sabrina
released the rope. Roy bellowed in anger and rushed at her, nearly tripping
over the sack of signal flares. Sabrina retreated, planning to leap from the
belfry and soar away, but the rope tangled in one of her wings.
She tried to fly free of it but instead
only succeeded in looping it around one arm and her other wing as she spun. She
hung there trussed like a chicken ready for butchering. The more she struggled,
the tighter the rope bound her.
Under other circumstances, this
could be kinky. Under circumstances where I’m not stuck with a sinister minion
of the dark side
.
Roy saw her vulnerability and
grinned wickedly. “Ah, I will deal with him soon enough. He’s already weak. But
you—you are full of surprises. Angels throughout the recent ages have all been
weak, fops, fools, and fairies.”
“Hey, the flaming sword and all
that tended to scare people off,” Sabrina said, baiting him with talk while her
mind raced for an escape. “So we’ve gone for a softer, gentler approach.”
“Talk therapy,” Roy said. “Prayer
circles. Lip service. Words instead of action.”
Okay, God, this would be a
great time for You to show how omnipotent You are. How about a little lightning
bolt out of the blue, or a bevy of bats, or a case of spontaneous combustion?
I’ll even take a swarm of locusts or a rain of frogs.
God, apparently, was out of the
“deus ex machine” business. Or maybe this was another of His tests.
Roy reached for the sack and
brought up a flare, along with a lighter. “I hear angels don’t particularly
like fire,” Roy said.
“Not true. You’ve been hanging out
with evil people, and evil people lie all the time. I mean, nobody trusts a
Gog, right?”
“I’m not a Gog. I’m a messenger.”
“Oh, like a dark angel, huh?”
Yes, very dark,” he said. “Let’s
see if we can cast a little light.”
Roy thumbed the lighter and
applied it to the flare, which began sparking furiously. He brought it closer
to her face, and a few of the sparks cast pinpricks of pain along her exposed
skin. Sabrina smelled smoke and wondered if her clothes had caught fire.
“It’s a shame to mar such a pretty
face,” Roy said in his killer-clown voice. Then he tilted his head to one side,
smiled, and added, “Actually, I’m in the shame game, so it’s all good.”
Luke and Cherry yelled from below,
but Sabrina couldn’t see them. If Luke weren’t wounded, he would scale the wall
in no time and rescue her. Cherry was about as menacing as a goldfish, so the
odds were slim that she’d retrieve the spear gun and make a dramatic assault up
the tiny belfry ladder.
And with God out playing golf with
Moses or something, that meant Sabrina was on her own.
The flare was inches from her
face, and her skin felt chapped. The flare glinted in Roy’s eyes, and she could
have sworn she saw roiling pits of hell in there. If Roy was a messenger, she
didn’t want to meet the guys he was summoning.
Summoning?
“Hey, Roy, aren’t you supposed to
be waving those things around? The old ‘One if by land, two if by sea’? They
might be angry if you let them down.”
Roy froze. “Goddamn.”
“Bible says not to take God’s name
in vain.”
But Roy wasn’t listening. He began
waving the flare wildly over his head again, ranting in Latin toward the sea.
The offshore storm, which had seemed to weaken in intensity, now rumbled with
renewed determination. The boiling purple froth churned toward land, flickering
with trapped lightning.
Roy yanked another flare from the
sack as the first one burned low. He discarded the dull red ember of the spent
flare and continued signaling whatever mysterious forces required his
attention.
Sabrina rocked back and forth a
little, careful not to ring the bell. Soon her feet were near the spent flare,
and she mashed her big toes together until the ember was snug between her
Crocs.
This had better work or you’re
toast
.
It was time to channel Little
Sabrina Vickers, the kid who had been an aspiring Olympic gymnast at the age of
ten, until her body started filling out and spawned the unfortunate balance
challenges caused by large boobs. Still, she had retained a lot of flexibility,
thanks to yoga, Pilates, and modern dance she’d pursued as an adult. Well,
until she’d died, anyway.
The ember had nearly burned
through the rubber of her shoes and pain bolted up her legs. She lifted her
legs and did a half-flip, dangling in the air as she applied the fire to the
old rope. Her skirt parted and Roy would have gotten an eyeful if he turned to
look.
But Roy kept on with his chanting,
and somewhere below, Luke was yelling at her to “do something.”
Between Luke and God, she had
plenty of bossy men in her life.
The remnant of the flare was
fading fast, and Sabrina wondered if the flame would last long enough. The
storm picked up force and the wind rattled the old belfry, causing the tin
roofing to flap and whisking away the stench of burnt rope.
What will give first, my Crocs
or the rope?
As it turned out, it was both at
the same time.
The pain penetrated her insteps
just as the rope gave way, and she bounced to the hard floor. Roy didn’t hear
the impact above the wind. In fact, he started gibbering “They’re here! They’re
here!”
Sabrina unraveled the rope from
her arms and wings. Roy’s silhouette stood against the lesser black of the sky,
the moon now almost completely obscured by clouds.
Out at sea, amid the boiling
storm, a mighty flash of lightning revealed rows of sailing vessels: old
frigates, galleons, and schooners. They were like a flotilla out of the past,
ghost ships encroaching upon a world where they had no business.
Except the business of taking over
the world.
Then the lightning faded and
Sabrina wasn’t sure what she’d seen. Luke had told her about the tricks the
water played on the eyes, especially for those with great imagination.
Still, Roy
had
been
summoning something.
And he still was. He held out his
remaining flare and waved as if to signal the ships to the island and a safe
harbor.
Now unfettered, Sabrina launched
herself at her nemesis again, this time managing a hard downstroke of wings
that sent them both hurtling out of the belfry.