by M. O. McLeod
She felt numb as she flew around the city with her brother’s body hanging from her talon-like feet. Kurma was truly distraught, nothing in her world seemed right. Nothing was sacred, nothing was off limits, and there were no boundaries. How could she think that she could keep some human parts to herself when the world was adapting to Raptors and Phantoms? Phantoms had a fighting chance to live in this world, but humans, like her twin brother Inis and her mom, would probably be killed. And Phantoms would most likely be behind it. They would all die, like Allie, at the hands of her enemy, the Phantoms. Her wings beat tirelessly as the tears streamed down her face, flying with the wind.
Kurma flew out east to the Esmondic Sea. The rough cold sea crashed with black waves as Kurma flew over the currents of the water. Allie would be with the sea, that’s all Kurma could give to him. If she could have given her life then she would have, but Santino’s dad was a coward and had taken the opportunity to kill another Phantom, who was just as he was, instead of battling his true enemy, a Raptor. Darius was dead though, she had made sure of that. Now, Kurma had to make Allie’s home-going right. There would be no kind words from her dad, no song from her mom, and Inis would not be there to support her. She had to do this on her own.
A family of Great Whales swam in formation underneath the waters, rising from the waves and crashing back into the sea. Kurma saw unity there, she saw strength and power. Kurma would have to welcome in a new support system as the members of her biological family faded away from her. As the Great Whales swam deeper into the sea Kurma remembered that she had her Raptors. No, they weren’t her mother or her father and they for sure weren’t her twin brothers, but they were the closest thing that she had to a family. As she buried one family member, Kurma still had her Raptor’s to look after.
Kurma steadied her wings and hovered above the rough waters of the Esmondic Sea and dropped her youngest brother into the dark blue waters. Kurma’s Raptored eyes watched as he disappeared into the deep sea, away from her and out of her life forever.
Chapter 33:
Long Lost Love
Nathanial had found a job as a print clerk. At the moment, he was trapped inside the QuikPrint as the Phantoms charged the north. The north was a haven in comparison to the south where he stayed with Inis. But now, as he crouched down behind the copy machines he knew that the north had fallen and that he had made a mistake in coming to Alexandria.
Nathanial peered over the counter and watched as the police were beaten back; the Phantoms were breaking in and looting the buildings. It was just the manager and himself that had been stranded in the compact print shop. They couldn’t leave or risked being turned into a Phantom or worse, killed. Nathanial stayed put and prayed the locks stayed bolted.
“Look!” his manager yelled as he grabbed Nathanial apron. “The Raptors have come.”
“What are those?” Nathanial asked wildly.
“Look out the window, Nat,” he instructed. “Haven’t you heard of them? They hunt down Phantoms. We might just make it out of this alive,” he whispered.
Nathanial inched his head over the counter and saw flashes of bright colors pass the shops window. Huge women with wings dropped down to the city’s streets from up high. The women could fly! They had wings and scales on their faces and looked like something Nathanial had never seen before. Then suddenly, a flash of bright crimson caught his eye. Nathanial darted from behind the counter.
“Don’t go near the windows, Nat!” screamed his manager.
But he had to be sure he didn’t just see what he thought he had. His head barely edged near the window sill, Nathanial looked out into the streets of the north and watched as his long lost crush stood battling a Phantom.
A gust of icy cold wind blasted through the print shop’s front window, shattering glass everywhere. Nathanial was knocked back and his hearing was impaired. He blinked hard twice and rolled over onto knees. He could feel the shards of glass cutting into his jeans. He finally was able to focus and stumbled to the front door. Outside the streets were mixed with empty bullet shells, sleet, silver and red blood, dirt, and dead bodies. Nathanial looked about wildly. Where had she gone? At that moment, he spotted a whirl of red; up in the air he saw Rimselda, the girl that used to live on his block back in Dublin Estates. What had his manager called her, a Raptor?
It didn’t matter, Nathanial couldn’t lose her again. He quickly found the old pickup truck that Inis had let him use for work and started her up. He watched as Rimselda flew up high and south, out of the north. He followed the red hair, where she went Nathanial would go too.
***
He pulled up to a huge sleek building. The only problem was that it looked to be closed. There were huge grates on the doors; the people who lined the sidewalks had a down-and-out feel to them. Nathanial had seen Rimy flying overhead to this building but he wasn’t sure if she actually lived there. He stepped over the sleeping bums and picked his way through the dirty bodies that were jammed together on the ground. Nathanial made a ruckus; he was loud, screaming at the top of his lungs. He banged on the gate and shook the gate until his arms hurt, but no one came.
“They won’t let anybody back in,” came a man’s voice from a bundle of newspapers.
“Who lives inside of here?” Nathanial asked.
The man tried to cover his body with the gray papers and said with a muffled voice, “Just know that it’s not you, so stop making all that noise, it’s pointless…”
Nathanial ignored him. He stepped away from the building and walked around the corner hoping to find another entryway or a garage. He didn’t see any entrances and was just about to give up when something made him look up. High up, perched on a window washing platform were dangly, pasty thin legs. Nathanial could just make out the red of Rimselda’s hair as the wind shifted and blew. He had found her, Nathanial had found his Rimy.
Chapter 34:
Birth to a Blue K Raptor
“Just like that, spread your legs and let the wind hold you up,” Jackie instructed. “Keep your head aimed downwards.”
“Am I doing it?” asked Margie.
“Yeah, now you are hovering,” Jackie said. “Slowly, glide left and right…”
“Good job, Margie,” Chelsea added on.
Margie was a Raptor. She felt scared and excited all at the same time. She was older than the girls by some years but it was the girls that were teaching her the basics to being a Raptor. She didn’t feel like her normal self. Margie couldn’t feel her lady parts; she now had ivory scales on her face, a pelt the color of ink, and wings the color of mauve. Things were very different now that Kurma had made her into one of the BlueK’s. Margie had already mastered transforming back and forth between her human form and her Raptor state. She could even feel the metal daggers in her arms that all Raptors came armed with.
It was the emotions that she felt that had her extremely disturbed. She was angry; the anger consumed her every time she thought about her old life. Her old life that she had shared with her philandering husband was just a slap in her face and she wasn’t done with her other half. She wanted to get even.
O’bellaDonna flew the mayor up the elevator and dragged him, bound and blindfolded, out onto the roof where her fellow Raptors awaited.
“Where am I?” Mayor Wilks shouted. His hands were tied in front of him and his eyes were covered with a dark cloth. He felt the frosty air and the wind gusted up around him. Mayor Wilks knew he was for sure outside. He remembered being snatched from the HQ but that was all. Now he waited to see his abductors, they had to have known that he was the mayor.
“Margie, your husband is here,” said O’bellaDonna.
“Margie, are you there?” asked the mayor. He shook his head left and right, straining his eyes against the dark cloth. “Margie, who are these people?”
Margie dropped to the roof of the Tower. There was her husband, the man that she had loved and the man who had mistreated her for so many years. She clenched her teeth at the sight of
him. She snatched the blindfold off and glared at his face.
“Baby, oh my goodness, what has happened to you?” Mayor Wilks jerked his head back and scanned his wife’s face; he saw the scales and orange eyes and knew that she had been turned into a Raptor. “And, why am I tied up?” The mayor yanked his hands up to his wife’s face. “Un-tie me!”
Margie walked in a circle around her husband. She watched as Chauncey tried to move and turn her way. “Am I making you nervous, Chauncey?”
Mayor Wilks could sense that something was different. He noticed the BlueK’s off to the side, watching him and his wife. He saw how O’bellaDonna smirked at him as if he was a joke. What was going on here and why was his wife treating him this way? He had saved her life, brought her with him when the Phantoms were breaking into the north. This is how she was repaying him? “Baby, just tell me what is going on.”
“So you think everything is good?”
The mayor’s mind went blank. The cold, the wind, and the height of the Tower was making him dizzy. “This is me, Margie, your husband of ten years. You love me, remember?”
Margie stopped pacing and finally confronted her husband. “The first year you had two girls in the back of your limousine. The next year there were the twins and the housemaid incident. The third year you rented an apartment for a girl who went to school at the university,” Margie ticked her fingers off after each incident. “The fourth and fifth year you had an affair with three of my sorority sisters at a conference in the west. Shall I go on?” Margie screamed at her husband.
“But, I never loved any of them sweetie,” Mayor Wilks smoothed his voice as he talked. “I have loved you all my life.”
“If you loved me then you would have treated me better.”
“I will treat you better, I promise,” the mayor pleaded. “Just let me go and we will work everything out.”
“I slept with Wenthell,” Margie voiced was laced with menace.
The mayor acted as if he hadn’t even heard his wife. “Just you and me, like it used to be.”
Margie rolled her eyes. The mayor didn’t care about her and never had. He didn’t even care that she had slept with his assistant out of loneliness. He only listened to himself. Chauncey only did what he wanted to do and what was best for him. She wanted to be rid of him. He had taken ten years of her youth and she had not one thing to show for it, no children or any happiness.
The anger spilled over and she thought she was going to scream, she was so frustrated. How had she let this man become the center of her world when he barely thought of her? It was because she thought he could give her something that she could not, love, stability, excitement…but never again. Now she could have some power, a life, and some control without him. Margie pulled her screaming husband to the side of the Tower.
“Baby, I’ve done nothing to deserve this!” He kicked and pleaded with all his might but it fell on deaf ears just as her complaints of unhappiness had fallen on his. “I know you aren’t going to kill me, Margie!” The mayor screamed as his wife finally took the rope off of his wrist. The mayor looked down over the ledge and his knees began to shake.
“No, I’m just going to push you,” said Margie. She took one hand and slightly shoved her husband off of the Tower of K. “The fall is going to kill you.”
Chapter 35:
Santino’s Wrath
The Phantom Plague followed Santino, their new leader, without question. Santino didn’t have time to make a grand speech about his dreams and hopes for his new followers. He came upon his old apartment complex and wanted nothing more than to see Kurma’s mom and her brother. At that moment that was all he cared about, getting his revenge on Kurma’s family.
Santino made his new underlings stay out in the snowy night. Thousands of Phantoms filled the streets and waited for his return. He only wanted his Phantoms, VIN and Kosner with him, the ones he had created originally. They knew his plight and wouldn’t question him or get in his way.
The complex was pitch black as Santino broke in. He didn’t care about the traps that the residents had place about the lobby floor and the sealed off doors weren’t strong enough to keep him out. The electricity was down so the elevators didn’t work. The building was humid and rank, odors clung to the unwashed crevices of his old building. They took the stairs and headed to level nine where Kurma used to stay. Santino remembered many nights of sleeping over, her mom cooking for the two of them. Santino didn’t know if Fae was still alive or if Inis was still living and breathing, but his anger pushed him ahead, ready and willing to kill them all off. It was their lives for his father’s life, someone had to pay.
Santino fingered the shiny numbers on the Rosales door then kicked it in, splintering wood as he went. He had heard noises and knew someone was inside the apartment, still living and functioning, unlike his dead dad.
“Nathanial where have you been?” asked Inis as he hurried to the front of the apartment. His eyes became wide when he saw Santino and two other Phantoms.
Santino made a lung for him but Inis was already in the kitchen with a butcher knife in his hand. VIN roared and made his way after Inis. Santino wouldn’t let that happen, Inis was his. “Stay out of this VIN,” Santino instructed. “I got this.”
“Santino, get the hell out of my house!” Inis yelled. Santino seemed twice his size and had grown since the last time that he had seen him. Inis was afraid of dying but even more afraid of being turned into whatever Santino was. He wanted to stay as far away from all Phantoms as possible. Yet, here were three Phantoms in his house with their mouth salivating at the sight of him. He didn’t see this ending well at all for him.
“Where is your mom, Inis?” Santino asked as he inched closer and closer to Inis who backed away, the knife still high.
Inis heart almost jumped out of his chest when he thought about his mother. He was just so glad that he had gotten her to safety. At least he had done that, if he was to die then let it be; he prayed for Kurma and his brother Allie just as Santino lunged for him. Inis slashed the knife at Santino’s hands; he didn’t want them touching him.
“Santino stop!” screamed a voice.
Santino halted, he must have heard wrong because the voice sounded like a familiar female’s voice. He turned around and there she was standing in the front room…it was Quinn, his mother.
“Santino, you have finally come home,” Quinn held her arms out and smiled at her oldest son.
Chapter 36:
The Skyline of Saylor Sax
Kurma flew back to the HQ even though most of the building had caught fire and lay in waste. She walked from the vast back lawn amidst the ruins; the hard-packed dirty snow, the wet wood, and the burned remains greeted her as she walked. Her Raptor senses picked up the smell of ash and thick smoke. The building sagged in on itself from the wet snow.
As Kurma stood outside in the dark she gazed up and saw a lone balcony with a telescope sticking over the side. Quietly, she made her way to the top of the balcony and landed on broken glass and charred pieces of lumber. The telescope was cold to the touch. Kurma looked inside the ruined office and entered the room. She could have had this office if things had gone right for her. It was big and spacious and had a perfect view of the canal. But, she hadn’t gotten to Darius in time and the north had fallen to the Phantoms. Sure, she could salvage some territory and make new Raptors but there were too many Phantoms and not enough humans to compete. The picking would be slim since the human numbers had dwindled significantly, there were less than one million humans in the city left. Kurma would have to move on to another metropolitan, she was sure of that.
She ran her claws against the overturned leather chair and placed it back behind the only desk in the room. Kurma took a seat and noticed the crumbling walls, the scorch burns on the ceiling, the icicles melting along the windows from the heat of the ashes. She took in all that she saw and was disappointed in herself. She had had a golden opportunity to take the city from Sa
ntino and instead she let the city swarm with Phantoms, her enemies. She had lost her brother and had lost the city. If she wanted it back then she would have to fight for it. The city was worth it, but she wouldn’t have needed to fight if she had made the best moves earlier on.
What Kurma realized as she sat in the wet decrepit office was that she had been taking baby steps. In the first seven weeks she had achieved great things for her kind, true, but not enough. The Raptors had immunity in the city; they could do what they wanted whenever they wanted. They killed off as many Phantoms as they could. Kurma had the mayor of the city in her back pocket at one point; he had even given her a high title in the city council…she was basically the law.
Still, with the human numbers declining the Phantoms would come for her, and she would have to make more Raptors to combat their numbers. She would have to build a race of Raptors just to compete against Santino and all like him. It had been seven weeks; Kurma should have had an entire defense force in that time.
Saylor Sax was the only option. There, with the help of Margie, she would have a head start on creating more Raptors. Kurma knew that Phantasm would spread; there was no denying that. But, she planned on having a major presence in the sister city so that Phantoms couldn’t completely overrun the place as they had in Alexandria. Kurma would take Saylor Sax before Santino and be ahead of the game. If she wanted to extend her control over the Manor then she needed the sister city. Alexandria was up in the air now that Santino had a powerful gang behind him, Kurma admitted that to herself. Nonetheless, once she had Saylor Sax then she would have an entire city of Raptors at her beck and call. The BlueK’s would reign supreme and Santino and his Phantoms would become the hunted. There it was, Kurma still had a hand to play.
Kurma stood up and walked back out onto the balcony. The night was dark and perfect for star gazing. However, Kurma wasn’t interested in the stars as she changed the dials on the telescope. As she looked into the eyepiece, Kurma could just make out the skylines of the sister city, Saylor Sax.
She would leave Alexandria in the hands of one of her Raptors as she went north to conquer the second largest city in the Manor. When Kurma returned, she would have an army of Raptors ready to take back the city of Alexandria. That was her mission, her legacy had to prevail, and she wouldn’t stop until she succeeded. Kurma spread her baby blue wings and took off into the night, headed for the Tower of K.
