Jessica Swift These Wings Were Made to Fly Page 7

  So far everyone was familiar with Pinnacle except for me, and I needed answers. I stood slowly, keeping my hands up where Rumor could see them. This wasn’t like her. This was the most I’d ever heard her speak. “Put the gun down and let’s talk about this for a while. What is Pinnacle? I’m new to all of this, remember? You’re talking way above my head right now.”

  Rumor raised her arms up, her arms covering her head. She let out a wail as she squeezed her eyes shut. I had hoped she would drop the gun but she didn’t.

  “Pinnacle doesn’t want just any nephil Jessica, they want Seth! Draper wants Seth. They’ll be angry when they find out you’re not him but they’ll still take you. They’ll take you and we’ll never see you again.” She shook her head and drew in a deep breath, pointing the gun again at me again, this time closing one eye and sighting in. “That’s why I’m going to shoot you. I have to shoot you enough times that you won’t move ever again. Don’t worry, I promise it won’t hurt. It will be like going to sleep, but forever.”

  I swallowed hard. I couldn’t run away, and if I called out for help, I doubt anyone would come in time, if they bothered at all.

  “Rumor, the cast is coming to rescue us, just like you said. I saw Terra in one of the robes yesterday.”

  The gun wavered for a moment, but she raised it back up again. “I can feel your desperation. You’re lying. Pinnacle can’t hurt you if all they have is your body. That’s all I can do for you. I’m sorry.”

  I lowered my arms, my eyes locked onto the gun, knees bent as I prepared to drop. “Me too,” I said.

  She pulled the trigger.

  I crouched down and grabbed my sleeping bag, pulling it up in front of me. I heard a faint pop followed by a gentle thwipt as the dart embedded itself in the fabric. There were three more pops as three additional darts hit the bag. I felt one dig into my palm and pulled it out immediately. She was reloading the dart gun with inhuman speed. I had to find a way to stop her.

  I waited for her to reload a fresh dart before I pushed my cage.

  The metal raked against the floor. Rumor screamed and dropped the gun as I crushed her between the cage and the wall. I kept my shoulder against the cage as I reached down and pulled the gun closer to me and into the cage from the bottom, similar to how Margaret had given me the burger. I barely had time to close my fingers around the weapon when Rumor pushed back.

  It was like getting hit by a freight train.

  The cage hit the opposite wall and I slammed backwards into it. My wings cushioned my back but my head hit a moment after and I crumpled down. When I looked up I saw Rumor on the floor, her hands reaching up to claw the walls. Black scorch marks formed where her fingers touched, and the vanity beside her was beginning to smoke.

  “Get out!” she screamed, her eyes closed. “Get out! Get out! GET OUT!”

  “Rumor!” I shouted, feeling the heat radiate from her body like a stove. “Rumor calm down!”

  The vanity burst into flames.

  I was already beginning to sweat from the heat radiating off her, and smoke was quickly filling the room. If I didn’t do something soon I would be dead. “Rumor you have to stop!”

  “I can’t do this anymore!” she screamed. “Get out!”

  I had to calm her down, but how? What had Daniel said the last time she had a panic attack?

  Things.

  “Things, Rumor!” I shouted.

  “I don’t want to see anymore! Stop showing me!”

  I inhaled a bunch of smoke and began coughing. “Five things!” I said, forcing the words out between gasps of air. “Five things, Rumor!”

  She opened her eyes and spoke quickly. “Cage, window, gun, sleeping bag, fire!”

  “Four things!”

  “Wall,” her hands now left a trail of searing flame. “Bottles,” the glass on the dresser cracked and shattered at her touch. “Cage,” I backed away quickly as she melted handprints through the metal. “Heat.”

  “Three things,” I said, trying to keep my terror in check. She was calming down, I hoped.

  “Crackling, burning, distant voices.”

  “Two things,” my chest was burning from breathing in the smoky air.

  “Smoke and perfume.”

  “One thing,” I barely managed to rasp.

  She looked straight at me, her eyes were an intense red-orange. “Fear.”

  I brought the gun up and shot her. The dart sailed past one of the melted holes and hit her in the shoulder. Surprise crossed her face.

  My finger twitched at the trigger, wishing I could shoot her again. If she went down, however, we’d both die here in this room. Even if I didn’t shoot her, and she escaped, I would still be trapped in here. This was all too familiar, like my mother and the Hooded Man. Maybe I was destined to die by fire.

  Rumor, unperturbed by the tranquilizer, ripped the cage door off like it was made of paper and stepped in. I scrambled to get away from her but she grabbed me. I had expected a burning, crushing grip but her skin was cool to the touch and, while firm enough that I couldn’t break it, her hold was gentle. She brought her lips close to my ear and, despite whispering against the roar of the fire, I heard it clear as day.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Tiny Rumor picked me up and held me as though I were a little kid, walking out of the collapsing, smoke-filled room.

  I barely managed to gasp in my first breath of fresh night air before Rumor dropped me. She fell soon after. I tried to take her pulse but my hands were shaking too badly. At least, my right hand was shaking, the left was numb up to my elbow from the dart she’d shot me with. I don’t think I was going to lose consciousness anytime soon though, I felt too jacked up on adrenaline and I had pulled it out quickly enough.

  I watched people throwing buckets of water on the fire, trying to put it out. A few people stopped by to see if we were okay, too. I recognized Roth immediately and aimed the tranquilizer gun at him (I knew it was empty but he didn’t), but lowered it as I saw he began checking over Rumor.

  “She’s okay,” I whispered, my throat raw from the smoke

  “She’s completely unharmed from the fire,” he said before taking one look at me, at my singed feathers and smoking clothes. “What in the world happened?”

  I was about to give him the truthful answer of I don’t know when I saw another familiar face approaching.

  “Don’t leave her alone with Mama Colleen,” I told him quickly, standing up.

  “You,” Mama Colleen said as she stomped up to me. “You tried to murder Rumor!”

  “Those are new,” I said, pointing to five white feathers in a fresh braid. “Except I think they looked better on Ru-glk!”

  I was interrupted by her hands around my throat. Cultist women had the strength of ten men apparently.

  “I’ll kill you!” she yelled, squeezing my windpipe shut. My wings shot out and fluttered in response, trying to get away without me.

  “No!” Roth said, standing up and facing Mama Colleen. “We had an agreement, the guns in exchange for a nephil!”

  The gun, I still had the tranquilizer gun in my hand.

  I struck her with it.

  With a squeal of surprise she let go of me, one of her hands going to her face. I wanted to hit her again but the gun had broken on the first strike. Her surprised gaze moved from her blood-covered hand to me.

  Then she punched me in the face.

  I wasn’t expecting it, and was knocked a step to the side. I felt air as another fist came at me but missed.

  Roth grabbed Mama Colleen’s arm, holding her back from me.

  “I can stitch you back together but if you murder her we take Subject Dove instead and then you have nothing!” he shouted.

  She kept her hateful eyes on me but stopped. Roth then put his hand on my shoulder and steered me away.

  At this point I was too exhausted to argue.

  Chapter 16

  I was sitting under the pavilion, handcuffed to one of the ben
ches and nursing a fat lip from the punch, when Roth approached me.

  “Rumor is sleeping in the medical tent, it’s the one by the blue shed,” he said. “Colleen wanted Rumor to stay in her quarters but I insisted she couldn’t for medical reasons.”

  “Thank you,” was all I said, my eyes on the sunrise.

  They hadn’t managed to stop the fire, and it had consumed the entire building. Luckily no one was killed. It could have easily been a huge disaster with a lot of casualties though, myself included.

  “By securing the safety of your flock-mate I expect you to comply in return.”

  “Cast,” I corrected him.

  “Pardon?”

  “Flocks are for pigeons.”

  Roth pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Don’t mistake my actions for sympathy,” he said. “You’re a curiosity to study, nothing more.”

  Wow, what a jerk.

  I was about to say as much when his attention was diverted to a black car and van pulling up. I was expecting them to be unmarked and mysterious but a logo was right on the side in plain view followed by the words Pinnacle Solutions.

  Two men exited the van. They wore what looked like armored vests under sport coats, not at all like Roth’s casual polo shirt and khakis. They spoke briefly to Roth, who then pointed at me.

  A woman stepped out of the car. The first thing I noticed was how tall she was, her high heels only increasing it to an almost freakish proportion. She wore a light gray business suit and black shirt, with her strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a bun so severe that it stretched the skin on her face a little. She disappeared into one of the buildings and out of sight, probably discussing things with Mama Colleen. Meanwhile the two armored men approached me.

  One of them opened his jacket a little to reveal a pistol, one that shot actual bullets rather than darts. I sneered at him in response.

  Roth left for the van and returned with some kind of voice recorder the size of a candy bar. He pressed a button as he grabbed my handcuffed wrist and turned to look at it. I tried not to wince at the feel of his clammy, sweaty hands. Jeez, it was only sixty degrees out here!

  “I am now examining the subject,” he said into the recorder. “Not one of ours. Not even tagged. Looks like we’ve got a wild specimen.” He proceeded to grab one of my wings and force it to unfold. “Good quality wing structure with no deformities. Feather coloring trending toward Falco peregrinus, anatum, or possibly tundrius. No particularly notable qualities upon first appearance, will attempt more detailed workup at a later time. Until then, assumed average.”

  “Well,” I said, quickly getting tired of being treated like a piece of meat. “You can’t spell average without rage.”

  He looked me dead in the eyes, still speaking into his recorder, “Subject is also proficient in English. Concluding report.”

  While he walked to the back of the van I turned to the gunman. “Do you realize you’re going to have to endure a long car ride with that guy as your passenger?” I said.

  I was expecting a snort or a smile or something, he unholstered his gun instead. I guess someone must have performed a humor-ectomy on the guy.

  The tall woman returned, this time walking up to me.

  “My name is Doctor Monica Draper,” she said. “I’m going to unlock these handcuffs and you’re going to come with us or my security guards will put a bullet in the back of your head. There will be no second chances. Saying yes suggests you have some kind of choice in this so don't bother. If you don’t understand and follow my instructions immediately you won’t have time to learn. While you are more useful to us alive we can also make use of a fresh corpse.”

  The fight in me died a fast death. I swallowed hard and tried to keep my heart from racing under her intense eyes. The cultists were wackos but at least they were soft and remotely cuddly. This woman had an alien intensity of steel.

  Draper popped the cuffs off with a turn of the key and I stood up. The cold barrel of a gun pressed against my head and I began to walk towards the van.

  We barely made it out from under the pavilion when one of the SOAR cultists suddenly stepped over to us. His face was deep inside his hood, but I could see a bright, summer smile.

  Seth.

  The Pinnacle guard paused. “Can I help you?” he said angrily.

  “No,” Seth replied, “I’m just here to distract you for a moment.”

  Then things got crazy.

  Daniel, hiding up on the pavilion roof above us, jumped down right onto the guard’s shoulder. I heard a loud snap of bone and he dropped the gun before Daniel drove an elbow into the side of his head, sending him to the ground.

  Draper, hearing the commotion turned around, reached into her jacket for a gun of her own. Seth ripped his cultist disguise off and spread his wings to cover me. Draper turned to him immediately, her finger on the trigger, but didn’t shoot as her expression changed from rage to surprise, her mouth open in a perfect O when she saw him.

  “Hello Mom,” he sneered as he brought his foot up as high as he could, shoving it into her chest and toppling her off those giant heels.

  Wait, Mom?

  I didn’t have time to process it before a gunshot went off. Terra had appeared from the SOAR crowd and was on guard number two a moment later. She managed to wrestle the gun away from him and fired two shots into the air, causing the cultists to go into a panic. Roth tried to exit the van but she pulled him halfway out and slammed the door into him repeatedly until he stopped moving.

  “Where’s Rumor?” Daniel asked me, grabbing the pistol from the gunman and throwing it as far as he could into some bushes.

  “A tent by the blue shed,” I said, remembering what Roth had said, wondering if he’d given me the specific location on purpose. Daniel took flight immediately.

  “Are you okay to fly?” Seth asked me.

  I nodded, unfolding my wings and leaping into the air, Seth following right behind me. God it felt good to be free again!

  “Seth!” Draper screamed at us from the ground. “Seth come home!”

  “That woman is seriously your mom?” I asked him.

  “She’s a little obsessed with me,” he replied. “Has some seriously creepy issues I’d rather you not have to find out about.” He’d found one of the guns and kept it trained on her as we flew higher into the sky.

  “How did you guys manage to find us?” I said once we were well out of danger.

  “Terra was the only one quick enough to follow the van at first. Initially we thought it was just a SOAR problem. You know, swoop in, grab you and Rumor, head out. The usual for us. Then we saw some Pinnacle Solution guys around town and knew it couldn’t be a coincidence that SOAR and Pinnacle were here at the same time. The rest of the cast didn’t know where the SOAR encampment was, but we knew if we followed Monica Draper she would lead us straight to where they had taken you. Holy crap Jessica, we half thought we’d only find your bodies.”

  I remembered Rumor and I being covered in blood. “Yeah, what happened?”

  “Rumor grabbed hold of you and she went splat.”

  “Splat?” I said, horrified. “What do you mean splat?”

  Before Seth could answer we saw Daniel holding a barely conscious Rumor in his arms. At first I was worried he’d have trouble with her extra weight but he carried himself, and her, with ease.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “West,” Terra said, appearing out of a cloud to my left. “We can hide out in Washington for a couple of days while we sort things out. Is Rumor okay?”

  “About that,” I said, “We need to talk”

  Chapter 17

  Terra made me wait until we were settled down.

  We found a large park in Donarow. Without a phone or calendar I’d lost all sense of time, but it must have been a weekday since there weren’t very many people enjoying the late morning sunshine.

  Terra gave Rumor and I a set of real clothes to replace our SOAR robes. We took t
urns changing in the park bathroom. Rumor had woken up most of the way through the trip and puked in midair. I actually felt bad for the guy whose Corvette interior was hit by the chunks at a stoplight.

  “Can you explain what happened back at the hospital?” I said.

  Terra grew a few shades paler than her norm. “We weren’t sure what happened at first. After we all smashed through that hospital window we saw you drop. Rumor must have figured it out the fastest because she was wrapping herself around you from behind. I thought she was going to try and carry you but she hit the sidewalk instead. Her blood was all over the place.”

  “Like stomping on a ketchup packet,” Seth said, his eyes looking distant.

  “It was awful,” Daniel said. “Some SOAR nutjobs dragged the two of you into a van and drove away. People must have assumed it was an ambulance, which is stupid because we were right there at the freaking hospital. I didn’t see anything wrong with her when I picked her up, so mind filling the gap for us?”

  We found a massive oak tree to lounge under while I told them everything that happened to me. The only point we had missing between us was when Rumor went, as Seth had said previously, splat, and I woke up in the van. Sometime during that unknown point Rumor had shook off the effects of falling to her death. I spared no detail as I caught them up. All of them looked ready to fly back and kick Mama Colleen in the throat when I described the feather-ripping.

  “Can nephil have fire powers?” I asked when I was finished. “Has Rumor ever done that to anyone else before?”

  Terra, Daniel, and Seth all exchanged looks.

  “No one has ever attacked Rumor before,” Terra said. “The Suits always focus on the rest of the cast. I’d always assumed it was because they saw us as a bigger threat.”

  Seth shifted in his seat, “Maybe it’s the opposite though. Who knows how long the Suits have been after Rumor. Maybe she scares the crap out of them?”

  It was hard to think of Rumor as scary, even after what I’d seen from her. So far, since reuniting with the cast, all Rumor had done was clutch tightly to Daniel. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Any time she did by accident she would immediately turn away, two warm circles of pink coloring her cheeks. At first I thought she was angry at me, but after awhile I began to suspect she was ashamed.