Jessica Swift These Wings Were Made to Fly

by Jennifer Clark

  “As part of their rules, angels try not to kill uninvolved people, but they’re not opposed to killing anyone who gets in their way. My dad trained me for when the day came that he wouldn’t be able to protect me anymore. It took three years after my Grace awakening for them to find me. My dad, uh…” she paused. For a long time the only sound was of spoons clinking on bowls and our breathing. “Anyway, I managed to escape and I’ve been trying to survive ever since.”

  We ate in silence for a while before she cleared her throat. “Do you want something to drink?”

  “Sure.” I said, followed by, “So how come I can suddenly use wings that I barely got?”

  She passed a can of lemon lime soda to me, saying, “We come back to Grace. It’s a catchall term, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s the angel blood flowing in your veins, it gives you your wing instincts. Have you ever dropped a chicken?”

  The sudden, seemingly out of context question threw me off guard. I laughed, “What?”

  “Back when Dad lived here he used to keep chickens around. Sometimes the chickens would manage to fly over the fence and I had to toss them back in. I always tried to set them down as close to the ground as possible but the fence is too tall. That's how I learned that when you drop a chicken her wings instinctively open and she starts to flap before she hits the ground. If I were to, say, push you off a building or cliff your wings would open and you’d do the same thing, like you did at the mall. We didn’t start with little fuzzy appendages and learned to use them as we grew up, instead there’s a part of us that knows how to use them as though we’ve had them our entire lives. That’s Grace.”

  I finished the chili and took my bowl to the sink. The water ran rust red for a while before coming out clean enough to rinse with. “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  “We’ll hang here until tomorrow afternoon to make absolutely sure we weren’t followed, and then I’m going to introduce you to my friends. They’re like us.”

  “There’s a whole flock of you?” I said.

  “Flocks are for pigeons. We prefer cast, that’s the technical term for a group of hawks. My cast looks out for each other and, together, we’ve managed just fine for quite some time.”

  There was a whole group of other kids with wings, except they had been doing this whole “fighting for survival” thing way longer than I had. I wanted to go home and curl up into bed, but at this point there was no home to go to.

  Terra interrupted my thoughts with a sentence that horrified me more than anything else had managed to today.

  “We need to cut your hair,” she said.

  She saw my expression and explained. “Your hair is pretty but it’s not very practical. It gets in your face during flight and, if one of those angels had gotten a handful of it, you’d be dead by now. Also, if they happen to report you as missing, people will be looking for a girl with longer hair. I promise to go easy on you and not crop it as short as mine, but we have to do something with it. Come on.”

  “Okay,” I said with dread.

  Terra dragged me back outside and sat me down on a chair atop the weathered gray deck in the back yard. I could feel her fingers running through my long hair. I looked almost nothing like my mother. Her hair cascaded down in gorgeous red curls while mine was dark chocolate.

  If I truly was a nephil, that meant my dad was an angel. I suddenly wondered if he, too, was brunette.

  At the first snip I winced, using all of my willpower to keep from shouting Wait! Stop! I changed my mind! and simply sat rigid, every muscle in my body tense.

  I had to distract myself to keep from freaking out. “So your mom was an angel?”

  “Nope,” she said, lifting her shirt without breaking her haircutting stride. Her flat stomach was smooth, with no sign of a bellybutton.

  “Lab created, that’s my aberration and what keeps me from technically being a nephil. While there are female nephil there is no such thing as a female angel. All pure-blooded angels are male.” There was a particularly loud snap of the scissors and she continued. “Before you ask, no, I wasn’t raised by an angel. The people who created me saw a science experiment, the man who rescued me saw a scared little girl. He’s more family than anything DNA could ever show.”

  Finally, the cutting ended.

  “There,” she said, allowing me to stand up before steering me to a window where I could see my reflection, “What do you think?”

  I inhaled sharply. Without the length to weigh it down, my hair waved and curled up at my shoulders where it ended. I ran a hand through the back, feeling where it was shorter, barely covering my neck. Asymmetrical bangs covered my forehead.

  “Wow,” was all I managed. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, it just looked so different from what I was used to. No way was the girl in the window me. I slowly extended my wings, letting them show as well.

  Everything had changed so fast.

  And it wasn’t about to stop.

  Chapter 6

  “Oof!” my breath exploded from my lungs as I crashed into the old wooden shed and through the other side, leaving a Jessica-shaped hole in the back wall. It demolished with a sound like dynamite. Dust and debris were thrown into the air, making my eyes sting. If I hadn’t been going backwards, my outstretched wings would have broken off.

  “Get up!” Terra shouted at me. She leapt into the air, snapped her wings open to glide past the destroyed shed, and landed down next to me.

  “I’m new at this, shouldn’t you be going easy on me?” I groaned, rolling to one side. Did I have internal bleeding? I’m pretty sure I had internal bleeding.

  “I’m sure the Suits will go easy on you if you tell them the same thing.” When I told Terra what I called the angels she had taken to it quickly. I kind of regretted it now.

  Terra extended a hand and I reached for it, expecting her to help me up. Instead she yanked on my arm, forcing me up before kicking me and causing me to crash back down to the ground.

  “Suits are not going to help you up!” she shouted. “You trust one and you die!”

  I was tired of her telling me all the ways I’d die. I was done. I tucked my wings in, rolled out of her reach, and unfurled them as I got up on my hands and knees, bursting into a run like I was at the starting line for a race. When I felt enough wind underneath me I jumped, taking to the air.

  Terra met me in the sky, a big stick in her hand. She swiped downward with it like a club at one of my wings, the wood hitting bone. My vision flashed white with pain and I faltered, but kept flapping. The pause had caused me to drop in altitude and turn left from Terra’s location. Seeing an opportunity I grabbed her ankle and pulled down as hard as I could. Her own wings folded up too high and she dropped fast, hitting the ground and landing on her butt.

  I landed in front of her to see if she was okay and was met with both her feet kicking the center of my chest and sending me outward. I hit the ground rolling, coming up on my feet in time to shove one of Terra’s fists aside. The other glanced my shoulder as I turned before quickly dropping, seeing a foot kick toward my face.

  I had to get out of here before she killed me.

  My foot swept under her and caught the back of her knee, forcing it to bend. She collapsed down and I took flight, pumping my wings rapidly, then dove into a maple tree in the backyard. Skin scraped off my arms as I slid down the backside of the trunk before running around to the side of the house where a stand of pine trees waited. I pushed through them and hit the air again, flying fast.

  I flew for several minutes before setting down in one of the many wheat fields in the area. Lying down made me invisible from the ground and, as long as I stuck close to one of the rows, I might not be as easily seen from the sky. I was on my stomach wishing I could have been on my back to see her coming, but my wings made it too awkward.

  I waited for a solid five minutes, catching my breath. I could feel the sun baking the back of my neck and I rubbed it absently, still unused to my shorter hair. My skin wa
s darker than Terra’s, but it could still burn.

  When Terra didn’t show I returned to the house and sat down on the porch. It was another couple of minutes before she arrived.

  “You keep that up and you might have a chance at survival,” she said when she saw me.

  “How did you do all of that?” I stopped, thinking about everything I myself had done. “How did I do all of that?”

  “It’s your Grace,” she said for what felt like the billionth time. “It makes us, well, more graceful. A cat doesn’t learn how to jump a gap, it simply knows. We’ll never be as strong as full-blooded angels though, so we have to make up for it by being smarter and faster.”

  My stomach rumbled. Terra had been abusing me all morning after a breakfast of pancakes, and I suddenly found myself looking forward to lunch.

  Terra laughed, “It makes you hungrier too. You’ll burn through more calories than an athlete when you fly or fight.”

  I tipped my head back, “Oh my gosh, I feel like I could eat five sandwiches and an entire cheesecake.”

  With my view now upward I saw something weird in the sky. It was too blocky to be a bird and too close to be an airplane. I squinted, trying to get a better focus. It almost looked like it had multiple sets of wings.

  Terra followed my gaze. After a moment she said, “Grab your stuff, we’re leaving. Now.”

  I didn’t argue with her after the last time she’d told me to run, so I got moving. We both shot up the rest of the stairs and threw the front door open. I grabbed my backpack where I had slung it on a kitchen chair while Terra headed into one of the bedrooms. I heard loud thumping and bumping, like she was trying to kick holes in the walls with her feet, and ran to find her.

  Terra had pried up one of the floorboards and was stuffing her own backpack full of plastic baggies of cash when the entire house shook as the thing outside landed. We both froze.

  “If we’re unlucky,” she whispered, standing up slowly, “it’s an archangel, but if we’re incredibly unlucky, it might be an actual seraph.”

  “How will we know if it’s a seraph?” I whispered back.

  A deep, reverberating voice came muttering from the living room.

  “Holy holy holy...”

  “They won’t be hard to miss,” Terra said, growing a few shades paler. “Come on.”

  She carefully unlatched the lock on a window and began to ease it open. Every scrape of the wood frame frayed my nerves more raw as the seraph came closer.

  “Holy holy holy...”

  Once the window was far enough open Terra slipped through and turned around to help me.

  I heard thumping footsteps coming down the hall, the clinking of metal.

  “Holy holy holy...”

  I grabbed onto the bottom part of the frame and got my head through before my wings instinctively popped out from my back, making me too wide to pass through.

  “I can’t fit!” I squeaked.

  Terra grabbed my arms and pulled. “Jessica, you gotta calm down,” she hissed, “and fold your wings back in.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Holy holy h-”

  The footsteps ended and the thing went dead silent. I saw Terra’s eyes go wide as she looked behind me.

  I started to scream.

  Chapter 7

  A burst of hot air rushed past me. I kicked furiously with my legs as Terra began wrenching on my arms. The pain of trying to fit my wings through caused them to retract and I popped out, hitting the ground face first. Terra flopped down on top of me as a huge gout of fire shot through the window, like a flamethrower had been turned on. Glass cracked and rained down on us in sparkling, blackened shards.

  After the blast of fire Terra hauled me up and we began running, taking flight shortly after. When I looked back at the house ablaze I saw the bottoms of my sneakers were smoking.

  That was too close.

  Terra flew up to me, saying, “Do you still have your cell phone?”

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket and handing it to her.

  She admired it for a moment before throwing it as far as she could.

  I gaped at her in indignation. “That took me almost a year to save up for!”

  “Even if you’re not a nephil they can use your phone to track you.”

  “They’re angels,” I said.

  “So?” she snapped, “Just because they’re ancient doesn’t mean they don’t know how to use technology.”

  “What about the phone you used to message me?”

  “I didn’t use a phone. I keep a laptop that spoofs different numbers. As for the phone at the mall, it’s a hollowed out shell I keep as a tool. People don’t pay much attention to a teenager who’s staring at her phone constantly so I like to use it to blend in.”

  I had to admit, she made a good point. “I’m really sorry your dad’s house got burned down,” I said.

  She shrugged, which looked weird in mid-flight. “It’s not your fault. They were going to find it sooner or later anyway. You learn not to get attached in this kind of life. It’s weird that a seraph would show up though.”

  “I’ve never heard of a seraph.”

  “Let me put it this way: Suits are like the FBI, archangels are the CIA, and seraphs are Secret Service agents. They’re the highest of the high that anyone has ever seen. I’ve never seen one before today. They have six wings, crazy fire swords that can burn you to a crisp within seconds, and Tourette’s syndrome for certain phrases.”

  “Do Suits or archangels use fire?”

  “No, why?”

  “The Hooded Man who killed my mom with a sword also burned my house down.”

  Terra side-eyed me the same way she did when I’d told her how long I’d had my wings. “Well, that makes one thing obvious, they want you extra dead.

  We flew until nearly sunset, coming down at a lake in the middle of some woods. There was a small fire contained in a ring of rocks and I saw some backpacks lying around. Terra gave a series of whistles and waited. Branches rustled as a figure jumped from the top of a tree over a hundred feet tall and landed on his feet. His wings were massive, despite his height being over six feet tall the longest feathers nearly brushed the ground. They were black with strips of white in the largest of feathers. His hair was dark, thick, and incredibly curly. His facial features were distinctly Indian, skin tone much darker than my own. He smiled brightly at Terra before catching sight of me. Initially it was a scowl, but I saw it soften a touch when he saw my wings.

  “Daniel, this is Jessica,” she said to him.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said with a quirk of a forced smile, then turned to Terra, “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?”

  “No,” she said simply. “Whatever you have to say in front of me you can say in front of her.”

  Daniel closed his eyes and exhaled sharply out of his nose. “Please, Terra.”

  “It’s okay,” I said before Terra could argue. “I’ll go gather some wood for the fire.”

  Terra crossed her arms but Daniel threw a grateful glance my way before I trudged into the woods.

  I didn’t get far before I heard them talking. I tried to ignore their conversation but their voices came crystal clear to my ears, as though I were standing right next to them.

  So much for privacy.

  “We can’t bring someone else with us,” Daniel started.

  “She’s a fledgling, Daniel,” Terra said. “She’s had her Grace for two days.”

  “All the more reason she’ll slow us down. In fact, she’s already slowing us down; you were supposed to be back here yesterday.”

  “If I hadn’t been there the angels or worse, the freaking seraph, would have gotten her.”

  “She had a seraph come after her?” he said, “now we have to leave her!”

  “So you’re saying we should ditch someone because they have a specific problem?” Terra growled. “In that case we’d better abandon Seth, we don’t want the inconvenience of
him following us. While we’re at it, why don’t we dump Rumor at the nearest SOAR recruiting camp? I’m sure they’d love to have her back.”

  Daniel was silent for a long time before speaking. “You’re right,” he said in a low voice. “I’m sorry.”

  “So where are Seth and Rumor?”

  “Getting some food, they should be back soon.”

  Their discussion turned more toward what they had been doing the last couple of days and it wasn’t long before I returned with an armload of wood. We were sitting in front of a much improved fire when two other winged kids showed up.

  Terra stood up, saying, “Seth, Rumor, this is-”

  “Jessica,” the girl named Rumor said.

  I looked at Rumor and she immediately turned away from me shyly. At first I thought she was a little kid, but then I saw she couldn’t have been much younger than me based on her facial features. She was small, both in height and weight, as though even a breeze might blow her away. Her hair was longer than anyone else’s in the group, down to her waist. Her wings were the same color as her hair, pure white standing out in brilliance against the dark of the woods. Intense, green eyes stared at the ground.

  Seth shook my hand, pumping it up and down it until my whole arm wobbled. “She does that sometimes,” he said by way of explanation. “In fact, she’s the one that told Terra about you.”

  Where Rumor was all wintery snow, Seth was like a bright, hazy summer. Behind a shirt that had been roughly chopped his wings were a riot of neutral tones, with spots and stripes all over them. Red-blonde hair stuck up in all directions, like he’d recently woken up, and hazel eyes twinkled while his face was set in what seemed like a permanent smile. Up this close I could see that his eyelashes were light colored and fine, and what I had mistaken for stubbly sideburns were actually tiny pinfeathers.

  “Sorry,” I stammered after finding myself staring.

  He ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up more, and laughed. “No it’s okay, I get that reaction a lot. I’m not exactly what you would call normal.”