wild. He looked down at his kill, cocking his head from side to side before finally kneeling down and picking it up by the scruff of the neck. Suddenly he snapped his head around, as if hearing something, and looked directly at the camera lens. He stared at it for a second before taking off again with a fast flap of wings, and then the screen went to static.
“Not the most angelic of behavior, is it?” Carlisle asked mildly.
The Blairs looked at each other then at Carlisle, obviously a little bothered by what they’d just seen. “Well, I guess he has to eat,” Ed said quietly.
“He’s killed two men doing the same thing, he didn’t eat them. He did it because he enjoyed it, hell, listen to me calling it a he. It, it enjoyed it”.
The Blairs swallowed and Ninah looked particularly upset. Ed himself was wondering what those men could have done, or tried to do, which would have provoked so brutal a response. In the time he’d known the angel, he’d hardly seemed capable of such wanton destruction of life.
“What do you want, Carlisle?” he asked tiredly.
“What I want is for you to stop this crap in protecting this thing, it’s dangerous, it’s an unknown, and we need to catch it in order to understand it.” He looked at Donna, “Your Billy is lucky that the A1 has a damaged wing. One wrong move and he could end up like that goat.” He jerked his head at the now blank screen.
“You people have been closer and interacted more personally with this creature than anyone else. What you could tell us might be invaluable, so to begin with, you’re all going to tell me everything that transpired between you and the A1, every little thing you can remember about it. Then, when I’ve decided you’ve answered all our questions to my satisfaction, then you will be allowed to leave”. Carlisle smiled as though he’d just bestowed a great gift upon them. With a sigh Ed slumped in his seat.
22
Billy Kennedy sat shivering in the dark beneath the rock overhang, the luminous dial on his watch telling him it was 11:45. He slapped his arm as another mosquito found him and decided on a little late night drink.
Billy wasn’t in a good mood, he was cold, tired, and hungry and his butt hurt from sitting on it for so long. He was also angry. Angry with the angel for causing all this, angry with himself for trying to help and most of all, angry with Donna Blair for getting him into this mess in the first place. In reality he was angry because he was scared and didn’t like to admit it.
The choppers had only ceased their search an hour or so ago, raking the forest with powerful searchlights, up and down they flew, over and over again. Shortly after the swimming hole had been discovered, the men had arrived. Soldiers, storming through the scrub, looking for them. Billy heard shots in the distance, shots and screams. At one stage soldiers had passed less than ten meters from the clearing. Billy had sat stock still, rigid with fear and hardly daring to breathe. His companion, by comparison, stayed calm, coolly tracking the soldiers’ blundering passage with his eyes. It was the only time he’d betrayed any emotion and that was hard repressed hatred by the look of it. Finally the sounds of terse voices and snapping branches faded as the soldiers moved further and further away.
Despite Billy’s constant attempts at communication, the angel hadn’t said a word since first hopping on the bike and it irritated Billy. If there’d at least been some conversation, the situation might have been a lot more bearable, but so far, denada. Billy had begun to think that perhaps the creature couldn’t speak full stop. This was a shame because Billy, curious by anyone’s standards, had a lot of questions.
At 12:00 Billy couldn’t stand it any more and decided to try and sneak back into town. He dragged the bike out and was about to kick it over when he realized how much noise it would make; too much. Damn, they’d have to walk. Well, he told himself, at least it would warm him up.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said, heading off and gesturing for the angel to follow. The angel started after him and, abruptly, Billy got an idea. “Hey, you couldn’t fly us back could you?” The angel cocked his head to one side. Billy flapped his arms then gestured at his wings. To Billy’s surprise the angel smiled and flexed one wing out to its impressive three meter span. He turned to the other one and flexed it only half way and for the first time Billy noticed the bandages. The angel then surprised Billy further by shaking his head and shrugging, as if to say “Oh well”. Billy nodded and shrugged himself before leading off once more.
The pair reached the outskirts of town by 2:30 and began quietly heading for Billy’s house, keeping to the shadows. Billy intended to pick up his car, a red Corvette Stingray, and get out of town, they’d work out the rest from there. They reached Billy’s street undetected, sticking mainly to dark alleys and cutting across parks, even people’s backyards, to avoid being seen by the wrong pair of eyes.
Now squatting in the front yard of a house opposite and down the street from his own, Billy turned to his companion, “Now look, I’m going to go and get my car, you wait here until I drive out. Then when I come past, you come out and get in okay?” The angel looked at him, his head cocked like before. “Forget it, I’ll work it out,” Billy muttered and sighed. He sure wasn’t going to take him over there, he’d never be able to explain him to his parents should they hear him and come out. No, he’d get the angel out of town and safely hidden somewhere, hell knew where yet but he’d work it out, and then he’d deal with his parents, who by now would be royally pissed at him. After that he hoped he’d get his just desserts from Donna.
He hopped over the small front fence and was about to bolt across the street when he caught sight of a black car parked directly across from his own house. Luckily it was facing the other way and Billy was back over the fence again in a flash without being seen.
“Shit, shit!” he hissed, his heart pounding. “They know I’ve got you,” he said to the angel, knowing suddenly how the creature felt as he realized that he was now a fugitive too. Billy slumped down, what was he to do now? Turn the angel in? No way. He shook his head to clear it, he’d always believed that he was a tough and resourceful character, streetwise and able to handle any situation. Sadly he realized he didn’t have half the cunning he thought he possessed. He sure couldn’t deal with this alone. Frowning and thinking fast, as fear and despair started to box a title fight for his attention, he tried to come up with a plan. It would be dawn soon and he had to get them both out of sight and he sure didn’t want to go back to the forest. Finally, with the sky just starting to lighten, he came up with a possible option and headed off with the angel in tow.
Half an hour later Billy looked around nervously and knocked loudly on a wooden back door with a glass window in its upper half. “Come on, come on,” he whispered tersely. He knocked again, louder, and from inside he heard muffled sounds as beyond the door a light came on. “Thank God,” Billy sighed. The sound of latches being thrown was followed by the door cautiously opening. A dressing gowned figure looked out at them and the man's eyes widened.
“Father Kelly, please, you have to help us!” Billy said, almost crying with relief.
23
The next morning around ten o’clock, the Blair family was dropped unceremoniously on the street outside their house. Although there was no one actually outside staring at them, both Ed and Felicity had the feeling that there were eyes peeking from behind drawn shades, following them up the front path to their home.
With the exception of Ninah, who’d snatched a few hours on her mother’s lap, none of them had slept at all the previous night. It had been a long and tedious affair of questions and demands for explanations from a lot of white coat types. They wanted to know everything from the rate at which the angel’s wing was healing to how many times he scratched his head a day. Ed didn’t like the pushy way his family was being coerced into cooperating but he didn’t see what he could do about it. If they told these people what they wanted to know, then they could go home and that was all he cared about
for now.
At around eight in the morning they finally figured they had all that the Blairs had to offer and let them go, but only after insisting that Donna sit a polygraph lie detector test. They obviously still hadn’t found the angel or Billy Kennedy. In his mind Ed wished the boy and his strange companion luck. They were then driven back to town and released with a stern warning that should they again come into contact again with the A1, they were to come forward immediately. They would also be under periodic observation.
The Blairs walked into their home and looked around. Although it hadn’t been ransacked, it was still obvious that someone, or more likely many someone’s had been looking through everything for hell knew what.
Donna’s room was the worst affected. They’d turned it upside down, probably looking for any link between her and Billy Kennedy, photos or letters that may indicate a secret place or hiding spot, whatever. They’d done a thorough job. Donna stood in the middle of this mayhem and looked around, eyes starting to tear as she saw all her personal things, including her diary and her underwear, strewn about. Her emotions were already raw from the past night’s ordeal and about twenty seconds was
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