Sparrow Man

by M. R. Pritchard

  I move my hand over his. “No, it’s fine. It’s… sweet. In a fucked up kind of way. No one has ever really cared about me enough to say they love me. I remember that from my life. Those words never came out of my father’s mouth or Jim’s.”

  Sparrow looks at me, his eyes sad even though he smiles slightly. “I should be the one apologizing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I gave up on you just like everyone else. I didn’t know who you were. I judged you, hated the position I was put in, and look where that led.”

  “But you’re here now.”

  “I’m not sure if that’s enough.”

  “I hope it is.” I stare at the rocky ceiling, swallow hard. “So if I survive this, what comes next?”

  “You’ll survive. You know who you are now.”

  “I think so, if what Jim said was the truth. It’s still kinda blowing my mind though.”

  “Good. Can you walk? We have to get out of here before they regenerate.”

  “Who?”

  He tips his head towards the decapitated corpses. “Come on.” Sparrow stretches an arm under my shoulders and helps me stand. What little blood is left in my body seems to trickle to my feet, leaving me light-headed and wobbly. Sparrow holds me tight to his side as we walk towards a shadowed corner of the cave. In the dim torchlight I can see a dark hallway.

  “How do we get out?”

  “This way. If I remember correctly.”

  “Did you see how they got us in here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can’t you do that thing to make us poof back to the real world?” I ask, almost out of breath.

  “Poof?” He chuckles a little. “I guess that’s a good name for it. I don’t do that, you do. And you’re too weak right now.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. Normally, we can’t do that.”

  “Oh.” His grip tightens across my shoulders, my head spins. “Sparrow?”

  “Yeah.” I hear a few stones roll under his feet and echo in the granite hallway Sparrow has walked us to.

  “I think I’m going to faint.”

  “Just hang in there.”

  My head feels dizzy, my skin like it’s on fire, and my vision blurs just as my knees give out.

  “Told you,” I whisper as everything goes to black.

  Shit just got real… fucked up

  “Will she be okay?” I hear Sparrow’s concerned voice.

  This is followed by a much more feminine voice. “She’s fine. She’s coming around now.”

  When my eyes flutter open it seems we are still in the cave. I try to sit up, only to be stopped with a firm hand pressing on my shoulder. “No. You stay down,” the female voice tells me.

  Turning towards the sound, I find a woman at my side. She has a strong nose, large hazel eyes, and short cropped blonde hair. The downy white feathers visible from behind her shoulders don’t go unnoticed. She’s striking.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  She leans back and presses her perfectly pouty lips into a thin line before standing and walking away from my side.

  Sparrow takes her place. The blood and gore has been cleaned off of him, his bare chest replaced with a black shirt stretched tight across his shoulders.

  “Who is that?”

  “That’s Teari.” He leans back. “And this is Marcus.” He gestures to a dark skinned man of similar build near where Teari went to stand.

  “What are they doing here?”

  “Reinforcements. It seems Jim has been up to no good down here. The Legion got word of what he’s been doing.” He glances at my chest. “And you needed healing.”

  “How did they get here?”

  “Seems your real father is a bit impatient. Sent them to help.”

  “No, I mean, how?” I wince at the sharp pain in my chest.

  “Oh, there’s a portal, a long ways from here. On true hallowed ground.”

  “How long until we get there?” I ask, hopeful for this to end.

  Sparrow starts to shake his head.

  “We’re not done?” I ask.

  “No.”

  My head falls back in disappointment, thunking on the hard rock underneath me. “Ow.”

  “Meg.” Sparrow’s voice drops just above a whisper. “Can you do something for me?”

  “What?”

  He leans close, the smell of him igniting those tingles deep in my stomach. “Don’t tell them how crazy I was. Don’t let them know what I was like before I remembered everything. The feathers, the… all of it. Just forget it all.”

  Tingles gone.

  “Why?”

  He glances back at Teari and Marcus, who I see are tall, lean and winged, just like him. But their wings aren’t broken. “I don’t want them to know me like that.”

  “Like what, Sparrow?”

  “Weak.”

  “You weren’t weak,” I remind him. “You kept me alive.”

  “I wasn’t strong enough. I almost dove into a river of the dead to go after those feathers. I remember.”

  “And us?”

  “What about us?” he asks as he stands, his tone completely nonchalant.

  I get a sinking feeling in my chest. Now that Sparrow is surrounded by his peers, everything is going to change, including how he acts towards me. I shouldn’t be surprised, no matter who I am now, it’s the same way everyone has acted towards me.

  “Whatever,” I mutter. As I move to stand Sparrow reaches down to help me. I push his hand away. “No. Don’t touch me.”

  “What’s wrong?” Sparrow steps towards me.

  Teari and Marcus turn to watch us.

  I would like to punch him in the throat and I’m sure it wouldn’t look so bad, now that he’s not crazy anymore. “I don’t need your pity.”

  “I don’t pity you.”

  “And I don’t need you telling them what happened to me.” The faces of those doctors flash through my memory, the looks they gave me as I sat in that hospital bed.

  “I’m not going to tell them anything.”

  “Then why do they keep looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?” Sparrow turns towards the other two.

  “Like they don’t trust me.”

  “They don’t. But they will, Meg. Just give them time. The only thing they know is that I was banished because of you. They know nothing more about you.”

  “And now they’ve been sent down here to clean up the mess?”

  “No. They’ve been sent down here to help us. This is what the Legion does, keeps the demons of Hell in check. Your Father, your real father, wants Jim dead for all he’s done to you. And Teari has already started healing you. What more do you want?”

  I want to scream at him. That’s what I want. I want to scream in his face and point out the fact that I just gave my life for him. I just took a knife to the chest to save him, and in return he wants me to keep the weeks we spent together a secret. He wants me to forget collecting all those feathers, gluing him back together, watching him smile at me as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Those moments with him are some of the best I’ve ever had in my pathetic life.

  I stand, feeling the rush of lightheadedness and a sharp pain in my chest. Looking down I see that my shirt is torn, stained with blood, hanging open. I grip it closed as I try to steady myself, my fingers rubbing against the bandage taped to my chest.

  “You need to sit,” Sparrow warns me.

  “I don’t need to do shit. Get away from me.”

  “Meg,” he warns, as I take a few shaky steps and fall flat on my face.

  …

  “You need to get your human under control,” Teari warns Sparrow.

  I turn my head and see them standing outside an open door. It seems we’ve moved from the cavern to a house, or a… trailer. Perfect. I look around the dim room; find my backpack on the floor and a bed under me.

  Sparrow’s eyes lock on Teari in a completely pissed way. “She’s not human. You
know that. That wound would have killed a normal human.”

  The bed springs squeak under me as I move. Marcus reaches out with one long, dark arm and slaps the door closed. They start talking again, muffled, but still clear enough for me to make out.

  “She’s slowing us down. We could’ve been done with this by now. Killed Jim and flown to the portal in no time, instead of waiting in this shitty trailer for her to heal.”

  “Did you forget I can’t fly, Teari?” Sparrow’s voice sounds agitated. “And you need her. She was engaged to Jim. She can draw him out. He wants her.”

  “That sack-a-shit Jim only wants her so he can escape from here. What makes you think she won’t help him?” I hear the deep voice of Marcus.

  “She would never help him,” Sparrow replies.

  “How can you be so sure?” Marcus asks.

  “He stuck a knife in her chest, among other things.”

  “The King will be pissed if you screw this up, Sparrow. I’m pretty sure this is your last chance at redemption,” Teari warns.

  “Yeah, I know!”

  “Then why don’t we forget about her and get moving?” Marcus urges.

  “Because I left her once and it wasn’t good.”

  “What are you talking about?” asks Teari’s unconcerned voice.

  “Twenty-five years ago one of our own left to live amongst the humans. She was pregnant with the King’s child.”

  “He has hundreds of children.”

  “Not like her.”

  The mocking voice of Marcus sounds next. “What makes her so special? We saw her tattoos, her scars. We know her kind. She teach you how to play beer pong or something else that shows more skin?”

  The sound of a hard thud against the wall shocks my eyes open. Boots shuffle, all three voices are shouting at each other, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone getting punched.

  “You have no idea what we’ve been through. What she has been through.” Sparrow’s voice is angry. He’s pissed, worse than when I tried to peek under his coat that one day. “If neither of you want to help then go back.”

  “We can’t go back,” Marcus’ strained voice replies. “We are under strict orders to kill Jim Sullivan and John Lewis and bring you both back.”

  The conversation seems to end with the sound of footsteps that stop outside the door. Sparrow steps in and closes the door behind him. He glances at me before dropping to one knee and searching my backpack.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Looking for a change of clothes. That shirt has seen better days.”

  I look down at myself and see the same ripped, stained shirt I had on before I fell flat on my face. Moving my hand to my chin, I wince, feeling a few rough scabs and a raised welt. I run my tongue across my teeth to make sure they’re all still here.

  “Don’t mind them,” Sparrow continues as he pulls out a clean shirt.

  “Why don’t they know about me?” I ask. “Everyone down here does.”

  “We are a very stubborn breed. You don’t win the wars of good and evil by trusting everyone. They’ll come around.”

  I lay back on the bed. “It’s fine. It’s not like I haven’t been treated like that my entire life. I’m just wondering what comes next, the trailer park jokes or the idiot jokes.”

  Sparrow stands over me, gripping my blue shirt in his hands. “No jokes allowed from them.” He sits on the edge of the bed. “Sit up. I’ll help you get that off.” He motions to my torn shirt. “Your father wants Jim dead,” he tells me as I move.

  “I heard. So why am I here?” I pull the torn shirt from my shoulders and toss it on the floor.

  “You’re too weak to poof yourself out of here. We kill Jim, John, and then travel back to the portal which will transport us home.”

  “Two birds with one stone, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Sparrow glances down at the shirt in his hands.

  “Are you going to give me that so I can put it on?” His eyes settle on the bandage in the middle of my chest. “Sparrow?” His eyes drop lower.

  “No one has ever given their life for me,” he says softly.

  “Me either. And no one has ever asked me to forget all of the things that made me love them.”

  Sparrow tips his head. “I don’t want you to forget them.” His eyes are on mine as he leans towards me. “It seems I am always losing you or watching someone try to kill you.”

  “That seems to be a repeating theme in my life.”

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight, ever again.”

  “Well, in that case, can I have my shirt?” I shiver, not from the cold, but from the closeness of Sparrow sitting next to me, the heat radiating off of him, heat that my body is currently craving.

  His eyes graze down my body. He tosses the shirt across the room. “Nope.”

  “Sparrow-” he muffles my protests with a kiss. Warm lips, wet tongue, it’s enough to make me forget what those other two said about me. As his mouth moves to my neck I ask, “I thought we needed to find Jim?”

  “Not until you’re better and not in the daylight.”

  “Who is Jim, really?”

  Sparrow sits back, his hands kneading my shoulders. “The son of a very bad demon.”

  “But, his father was the Sheriff.”

  Sparrow shakes his head. “Nope, that was his Watcher, like a babysitter. Sometimes demons can get out of here, just like we can get out of Heaven, and live amongst the humans.”

  I press my fingers to my head. “But, I don’t understand how those corpses walk down here. And Noah… he was normal-ish, until he turned.”

  Sparrow pulls my hands away from my face and tucks the loose strands of hair behind my ears in a sweet movement that tears at my heart. “When you are new down here, freshly dead, your soul remains as it was when you were alive, looking normal and human. It’s so they can find a Safe House and repent. Get one last chance at Heaven.”

  “And if they don’t go to a Safe House?”

  “Then they wake up a walking corpse and this is their Hell.”

  “But it looks so normal down here, just… darker.”

  “It is.”

  I shiver again. “How did I get down here? Did I die? Was I not really in a coma?”

  Sparrow rubs my bare arms. “You were in a coma, your soul teetering until we found each other and you woke. Now, you are very much alive. You can poof yourself, your whole body, between realms. If you are here, you are not on the earthen plane, and when you are on the earthen plane you are not in Hell. Understand?”

  “This is so fu-” I press my fingers to my lips, stopping myself from finishing that sentence.

  “Hm. Seems you remember my warning.” I catch a glimpse of humor in his eyes.

  “Oh, I remember,” I smile. “I’m not allowed to say fuck around you.”

  He leans closer. “You know what’s going to happen now.”

  “Won’t they hear us?” I look towards the closed door as my head hits the pillow.

  “No. I’ll be quiet and slow.”

  “You were slow last time,” I remind him. Painfully slow and sinfully good.

  “Then this might take forever.” Sparrow shifts on the bed, toeing his boots off in the process, pressing me down on the mattress.

  I run my hands over his shoulders. “I see you’ve finally found a shirt.” I pinch the thin cotton between my fingers, wanting to feel his skin instead of the soft fabric.

  “You like it?” he grins, running his hand through my hair, pressing his lips to the corner of my mouth.

  “I’d like it better off.” I reach for the hem of his shirt.

  He shifts again, sitting up on his hip, raising his arms to pull the shirt over his head. “As you wish.”

  Sunlight filters in from the small window near the bed, a few faint scars are visible across Sparrow’s arms and chest. I run my fingers over a long mark on his bicep. “What’s this from?”

  “Battle, long ago.” He reaches for m
y bra, eyes fixed on mine as he flicks his finger across the clasp.

  I forget about the marks on his skin and focus on the warmth, the strength, the intensity radiating off of him.

  …

  Sparrow leans over me, propped up on one elbow. “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you before touching you.”

  I smile. “It’s okay. I like it when you touch me.”

  He runs a finger across my collarbone. “Me too.”

  “How will you kill Jim if they can regenerate?” I ask.

  “Burn the body.”

  “Why didn’t we do that before?”

  “Never had matches or enough time while we were running.”

  “Oh.” I look around the room, my head thrumming with questions.

  “Ask,” Sparrow urges.

  “So, Teari and Marcus, they eat sunlight and never sleep like you?”

  Sparrow chuckles. “They eat food and sleep. Just do less of both than you do.”

  “Oh. And you?”

  Sparrow frowns and looks away for a moment before shifting, moving so we are eye to eye. Noticing the piece of broken wing jutting out from behind his back, I reach out and touch it. “Did it hurt?”

  “Not as much as watching Jim stab that knife into your chest.” He tips his shoulder away from me while drawing my hand down with his, holding it to his bare chest.

  I shiver at the memory of Jim stomping on Sparrow’s wing.

  “Let’s get you dressed.” Sparrow sits, pulling me up with him. “Then you can sleep.”

  I stand, steadying myself with my hand on the wall. I manage my underwear, jeans, socks and bra by myself. Sparrow collects the shirt he got out for me and walks towards me with it in his hand.

  “You look pale,” Sparrow says.

  I tip my head, not quite able to find my words. My head turns foggy, vision blurs.

  “Shit.” Sparrow takes my shoulders in his hands, leads me to the bed and sits me down. “I think standing was a bad idea.” He stretches the shirt over my head. I glance down to see blood staining the bandage on my chest.

  “Maybe it wasn’t the standing,” I mumble, feeling awfully lightheaded.

  “Lay down.”

  He doesn’t have to tell me twice. I drop onto my side on the bed. Feeling the mattress give as Sparrow lays next to me, I roll slightly. He tucks his chin into my neck, wraps an arm around my stomach. “Sleep, Meg,” he whispers in my ear. “I won’t leave you.” He presses a kiss to my shoulder.