Before These Wings (Wings Book 1)

by Wendy Knight

  As one, they raised their hands.

  She didn’t know what she was doing, only what she’d seen the Pys do a hundred times, but the blood seemed eager to escape Phoenyx’s body. It leaped from her palms and her fingertips, arcing through the darkness. Akit cried out, but too late. Phoenyx flung her hands forward, the fire smashing into the back of Selenia’s head.

  She screamed, tumbling forward. Behind them, Akit screamed, clawing at her skull. Phoenyx also felt the pain, but it was muted, as if her human half sheltered her from the attack. Not hesitating, she did it again.

  And again.

  Aylin tried to fight back, but the girls around Phoenyx had by then mastered the fire as well, and they attacked all at once. Selenia struggled to her feet, but was instantly thrown back to the ground.

  “Phoenyx! Phoenyx, don’t let them take me!” Brookyll screamed. Another Py, one Phoenyx hadn’t seen coming, had Brookyll by the hair, dragging her backward.

  Kaydree spun to face Phoenyx. “I’ll distract them. Get my little sister and get out of here. Do you hear me?”

  Phoenyx nodded. Kaydree went after the alien holding her sister and Phoenyx jerked away. She let her wings lift her into the air and raised her hands, willing the alien blood in her to escape.

  “Use your wings!” Phoenyx yelled. She grabbed Calista by the arm and jumped into the air, unsteady, sliding from side to side and crashing into walls. Selenia was struggling to her feet, and Phoenyx could see the blood already leaping from her fingertips and palms, ready to attack.

  “Fly!” Phoenyx bellowed, shoving Calista forward. The little blond shot through the air, wasting no time acclimating to the wings that were twice her size.

  Phoenyx turned slowly, facing Selenia. “Let us go.”

  “So you can do what?” Selenia panted. “Your people will hate you. Your world will kill you. We are your future.”

  “No.” Phoenyx flung her arm back toward the huge bay window overlooking the incubation chamber. “That is not a future for anyone.”

  “It can be different for you,” Selenia simpered, her beautiful blue eyes widening pitifully. “You can be one of us. Look at you. Look at how beautiful you are. How powerful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “That’s because you’ve never given anyone a chance. How many of us have you killed, Selenia? How many have you even let fly around your ship or attempt to use this awful gift you’ve given us?”

  By the look Selenia gave her, Phoenyx had her answer.

  None.

  “We’re nothing but incubation houses for your growing race.”

  “We saved you from the Garce,” Selenia whispered.

  Phoenyx longed to look over her shoulder, to see if the other nine had escaped. But she couldn’t. It would get them killed. “You are worse than the Garce. You pretend to be heroes, and you’re worse than they are!” she screamed, hands fisting so tight at her sides that her sharp nails dug into her palms. She felt the blood rise to the surface, sizzling against the air.

  “You know nothing! The Garce are us! We are the same!” Selenia screamed back. “Do you know who leads them, these Garce you think are no worse than we are? We do! One of ours leads them away from us and feeds on them to keep herself alive. They are the same!”

  Phoenyx felt her world rock and her jaw dropped. “What?” she asked despite herself.

  “They’re mindless. Didn’t you wonder how they got here? They’re not smart enough to open a door, let alone build something capable of inter-planetary travel.” Selenia purred, realizing she had Phoenyx’s full attention. “One of ours realized she could keep herself alive forever, and she takes them from us. Takes them to feed until they’ve exhausted a planet of its resources. And then she takes them away from us again.”

  Selenia stalked over to the wall and hit a button Phoenyx couldn’t even see. A small window slid open, letting light into the darkness. ”You can’t run from me, little one. I can stop you.” Selenia had a wicked, terrifying grin. She thrust her hand through the window, into the last rays of the setting sun. She screamed, and Phoenyx screamed, as her arm blackened and burned, even though she was in the shadows. But Selenia’s hand was worse, when she pulled it inside. It was nothing but bone and blood, and Selenia cradled her arm to her chest, wrapping her wings around her. “See what happens when we go in the sun, little one? You’re mine now. You’re ours. When we hurt, you hurt. When we burn, you burn.”

  Moving lightning fast, Selenia caught Phoenyx by the throat. “You’re part of me now, pretty little human.” She stroked Phoenyx’s black hair, and it seemed to follow her hand, turning blue wherever her fingers landed, and spreading. Nyx struggled, whimpering. A day ago, she’d been dying. Now, she felt like she could live forever.

  Except that Selenia was about to take that needle that was the size of a baseball bat and shove it into her stomach. Implant her child. That child would grow and grow until she burst out of Nyx’s body, full-grown.

  “Run, Pheonyx, Run!”

  Phoenyx jerked away as one of the needles shot through the air, slamming like a dart into the wall next to Selenia’s head. Selenia screamed, scrambling for the baby that slipped from the broken glass.

  Phoenyx didn’t hesitate. She leaped into the air, willing her wings to be strong and steady, and whirled away, shooting through the hallways, crashing into corners. Nima and Sienna waited, motioning her frantically. Giving up on her wings, Phoenyx landed hard and ran. She’d always loved to run. She was the fastest girl at her school, faster than most of the boys. So she ran.

  But she wasn’t faster than the aliens.

  Nima threw the blood from her hands like a baseball, hitting Selenia in the face. Akit, who had just struggled to her feet, screamed again and fell, and Selenia howled, clawing at her eyes.

  Nyx felt the pain, like she’d stood too close to the fire, but it wasn’t agonizing, it wasn’t boiling away her skin like it was Selenia and Akit.

  We’re resistant. Resistant to whatever it was that caused the chain reaction.

  They sprinted through the corridors, leaping from landings and praying their wings would hold them. Several times, Phoenyx crashed into sharp metal, certain she would die, yet she did not. An alarm sounded, blaring through the ship, over and over, seeming to reverberate through Phoenyx’s skull until she thought it might crack.

  There was no way they’d make it out alive.

  Their saving grace was that it was a small ship, and there didn’t seem to be more than twenty or thirty Py, and most had been in the incubator below. Very few actually showed up to fight them, and when they did, they found it surprisingly hard to take the human hybrids down.

  But there was a very real possibility that they wouldn’t have to. Because Phoenyx and Nima and Sienna were completely lost — not only could they not find the way out, but they couldn’t find the other seven.

  “Phoenyx!”

  Phoenyx didn’t recognize the voice, but her human half reacted to it. It wasn’t an alien calling her. Grabbing Nima’s and Sienna’s hands, they sprinted through the endless maze of metal and glowing blue markings, following the voice like a lifeline.

  It was a lifeline.

  Phoenyx rounded a corner too fast, slammed right into Andi, and tumbled over the side of the landing. She fell, fell, fell, for what seemed an eternity, and then heard someone — she wasn’t sure who — screaming at her to use her wings.

  It sounded like Selenia.

  Phoenyx snapped her wings, bargaining for her life with the alien half that sought to control her. Finally, she gave up.

  And let it win.

  Her wings caught, spinning her upside down and around, and then she was soaring up, weaving over and under the endless walkways, until she landed hard next to Sienna and Nima, who both grabbed her as if she might throw herself over the edge again.

  “We found a way!” Sienna didn’t let go of her hand, instead spun around and raced straight at the thick metal wall. Phoenyx opened her mouth to c
ry out, object, anything, but Sienna raised her hand, releasing the blood from her fingertips, and it weaved through the air, beautiful, sparkling, azure as their tattoos.

  The wall opened.

  “How—” Phoenyx started, but there was no time for questions.

  The sun had set while they’d been lost, and night air welcomed them, lifting them from the ship, pulling them into the clouds.

  They were free.

  * * *

  THE PYS CHASED THEM, but the hybrids knew the area better than they did. All this time the Pys had been there, they hadn’t learned their surroundings. Hadn’t needed to.

  Phoenyx was shocked at the landscape. It had been spring when she’d been taken. It was winter now. Dead of winter, with thick snow and bleak deadness everywhere around them. She’d been gone for months.

  What of Enika? What of Cole? Had they given up on her?

  Cole.

  They made it to the canyon, to the low-lying caves that had once littered the highway. It was there they hid for days, learning their new bodies, new powers. Until the Pys outside gave up on them. Until it was safe to come out.

  She learned that the moon hurt, but only in a sort of odd burning, like standing in the sun when she was human. It didn’t kill them. She learned that her wings seemed to have a mind of their own, and that her tattoos glowed in the dark. She learned to fly without tipping over and to throw blood balls that scalded the rock and melted the snow.

  She learned to become one of them.

  Phoenyx was dead. That part of her, it was gone. They called her Nyx now, because it hurt less.

  “We have to see if there are others like us. Others who can fight back. We have to see what’s become of our world.” Sienna paced, as she always did. Calista watched her, small and quiet. She was by far the youngest of them all and she missed her mama, but she was fierce.

  “You don’t think we’ll run into other ships? Other Pys waiting to kill us?” Brookyll stood at the mouth of the cave, safely in the shadows as she watched the sun set.

  “I don’t know, but we can’t stay here,” Sienna said. “We have to see. We have to know.”

  Nyx watched them. They’d had this argument many times, and the general consensus was that they were leaving, but to where, they hadn’t agreed yet.

  She wasn’t going with them.

  Her mother and her sister were dead. But Cole and Enika — they were still out there. She had to find them. No one liked the idea, not even her. She had no idea how she would survive on her own in this new body. But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t go, not without Cole. So she tuned their conversation out and watched the sun set from the depths of the cave.

  She missed the sun.

  They finally decided going east was best, to see what had become of their country. To see if there were any others like them. If they’d fought back and escaped, surely, there had to be others. Nyx watched them go, The Nine, as she’d started calling them. It felt like the remaining pieces of her soul went with them. As if sensing her pain, Calista fell back and threw her arms around Nyx one last time. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’m still with you. I can still feel you.” She smiled down at the teeny little blond before her.

  “Yes.” Calista nodded. “When you need us, call for us. We’ll hear you. We’ll come.”

  Chapter 14

  SHE SEARCHED THE NEIGHBORHOODS BY MOONLIGHT, everywhere she or Cole had ever gone. The places she grew up, the places they’d lived in fear. The places they’d fought to survive.

  There was no one. No groups of survivors, no anyone. Only Garce, that she craved without realizing it, and hunted without will. She’d run from them once, but now they feared her. The power she’d craved since they had arrived was finally hers.

  And she didn’t want it.

  She followed their pack, because they could sense the humans and she couldn’t. She fed when she had to, though it disgusted and horrified her.

  The Garce were obsessed with what had once been an idyllic little street in downtown Ogden, 25th. She couldn’t figure out why, and she watched them for days from the top of the tower, killing them when she got frustrated, sleeping when she had nothing better to do. She should have left with the others. There was nothing here for her now. Cole and Enika were gone, and she had no idea what had happened to them or how to find them.

  The commotion happened just before the sun came up, while she still perched like a gargoyle at the top of the building, half-asleep and trying to talk herself out of letting the sun have her when it rose.

  The Garce yelped and snarled, working themselves into a frenzy. There was something down there…

  Nyx sat up so suddenly she toppled off the ledge, but her wings caught her sharply before she fell. Hovering in the air, she scowled at the Garce, trying to figure out what was so suddenly wrong with them.

  Gun shots.

  She gasped, flinging herself back onto the ledge.

  Gunshots, many of them, into the pack and the Garce scattered, trying to escape. It didn’t kill them, but it hurt more than any little gun Nyx had ever used.

  She went closer despite herself, because gunshots meant humans. Humans meant hope.

  The Garce were rallying now, fighting their way through the barrage of bullets, starvation making them desperate. She heard yells and cries and knew whoever shot that gun was in trouble. She couldn’t let that happen. Human. A familiar voice.

  She dove down, throwing blood balls she’d mastered in the caves, mastered in her hunts. The Garce went down under her onslaught, falling under her weapon in a way no gun could ever do. One after another, until the rest ran, hunger forgotten.

  She landed in the middle of the street, breathing hard, the fire in her depleted. It would come back, but it would take time.

  She didn’t see the bullet until it tore through her wing and into what had once been her heart.

  Gasping, because the scream couldn’t escape through her throat, she fell to her knees. It didn’t kill her, but it hurt. One hand clutched at her chest as her wing fell limply to her side, and the other held her up when her body tried to give up on her. She heard the distinct sound of the next round clicking into the chamber and looked up, peering through her hair into the barrel of a gun.

  “Keven?”

  He yelled, jerking away from her, firing into the air. She cringed, writhing against the pain in her chest. Her own friend had shot her.

  Because she was an alien now.

  Not one of them.

  Your people will hate you. Your world will kill you.

  “Who are you? How do you know my name?” Keven snarled, jerking the gun back toward her.

  She gasped, felt blood pool between her wings. The bullet had gone clear through, at least. That had to be good, right? The sun rose over the mountain, its rays reaching for her. She had to move. Had to get up, or she would die.

  “Who. Are. You?” Keven growled.

  “It’s—it’s me, Keven. It’s Nyx — Phoenyx. I need—I need help.”

  “You’re an alien,” he snarled.

  The light inched closer, and she crawled away, still cringing against the pain in her chest. “Where—where’s Cole? And Enika?”

  He stared at her for several long seconds before he lowered his gun. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “What?” she bit out around the pain. “No.”

  Several more seconds with the sun coming closer and closer. She tried to get to her feet but failed, falling back to the ground in a heap of fiery blood and dust. The gun fell from his grasp, echoing as it clattered against the broken sidewalk, and he was scooping her up while she fought to remain conscious. He carried her away from the sun, into the dark of a storefront and then beyond, into the basement and through a door.

  Into the tunnels he’d insisted still existed.

  “Where—where is Cole?”

  He was trying to stop the bleeding but it burned his rags, trying to patch her wing, but it wouldn’t hold still. H
e refused to meet her eyes.

  “They’re gone, Phoenyx. They left with a group, searching for you. Enika refused to believe you were dead. Guess she was right.” He scowled at her wing. “I don’t know where they went and they left months ago. You’re an alien, Phoenyx.”

  “Phoenyx is dead,” she said quietly as pain crushed her very soul. “Phoenyx is dead. Don’t call me that.”

  He paused, considering her before he went back to trying to stop the blood. “Then what do you want me to call you? Alien? That’s weird.”

  “Nyx,” she whispered. “Just call me Nyx.”

  The End

  * * *

  Nyx’s story is just beginning! Read on in With These Wings on Amazon or check out the first few chapters on the next page!

  https://goo.gl/CEc1WL

  With These Wings

  Prologue

  A SINGLE, TERRIFIED SCREAM TORE THE illusion of safety in the alley to pieces.

  “Run!”

  Cole jerked from the exhausted stupor he’d been in for the last several minutes. He scrambled to stand before his eyes were even fully open. “Phoenyx!” He grabbed her wrist, but she was already moving, springing from sleep to her feet.

  “Enika!” They both spun toward his sister, who somehow had managed to sleep through the chaos erupting from beyond the alley where they thought would be safe. Enika stirred, her eyes fluttering, but Phoenyx had her by the hand, tugging her to her feet as they turned to escape.

  Everyone in the alley screamed and ran and cried, desperate to get away. They rounded the corner, Cole in the lead, without pausing to check first.

  The alien — a Garce — waited in front of him, sucking light from everything around it, drool dripping from teeth glimmering in the shadows of its mouth. Cole spun, shoving Phoenyx and Enika back into the alley. “The other way! Go, go go!”

  Phoenyx was already running. Before the world had ended and the Garce had shown up, she’d been a track star. Now, her speed kept her alive.

  Enika, on the other hand, did not have speed. She’d been a designer, an artist, a dreamer, but art and dreams didn’t keep her alive. So Cole kept her alive instead.