Wings of Boden (12 page)

Angie and I turned to face each other.

“What the—?” I said.

“Don’t worry about it. She’s just a brainless
little bitch just barely out of her shell.”

“But what if she tells—” Panic set in,
lodging the words in my throat.

“Don’t let it get to you. We’ll get through
this.”

After racing to the sink, I yanked the faucet
handle up, splashed cold water on my face to keep from
hyperventilating, to hold the fruit down in my stomach. Leaned over
with my palms flat on the vanity countertop, I tried to slow my
heart.

Angie placed a hand on my back, consoling
rubs. “It’s okay, pull yourself together. Sweetie, you need to
understand something. It’s gonna get worse. A lot worse.”

In the mirror, water blinked off my lashes,
dripped off my chin. My hair hung over the sink. Gazing into my own
eyes, I began to realize her point. This was nothing. I need to
grow up,
now
. With a jaw clench, I spun around, steeled my
shoulders. “You’re right, Ang. You’re absolutely right.”

We stepped out of the restroom. Across the
way, there stood that little drek in the middle of a group of
dreks, one large male in the bunch. All wore their typical
form-fitting black shorts and T-shirts, stupid-looking wigs on all
the females—red, black, blond.

Who made their clothes for them? Did they
have a special drekavac shop or something?

The female was saying something while the
rest hung on her words. A group of fans, angels, strolled along
with their plates and cups of refreshment, chatting while they
passed between the dreks and me. A din of fan chatter and laughter
filled the corridor, voices overlapping into gibberish. The female
drek looked over at us and pointed a long finger. All at once, the
others looked over. A chill ran through my wings, but I pushed it
down with a slit-eyed glower. My lungs seized when the small dreks
appeared as angel teens, then flashed back, testing my sanity as I
looked at dreks, angels, dreks, angels. I shook my head. It didn’t
work.

“Let’s go, Elle,” Angie prodded.

My heart punching at my chest, I spun around
and we marched off.

“Where ya goin, Princess?” a scratched voice
behind us, a familiar tone, like Dakarai’s before he transformed
into a—

“Just go away you filthy scavenger,” Angie
growled back. I kept my eyes forward.

NO
. I stopped sharply, wheeled around
on my heels, and looked up at the drekavac. A hairless head. Pale
gray skin wrapped over bone. Bulging black eyes. A ghoulish smirk.
The group behind him stood in my peripheral, but I kept my stare on
the male in front of me.

Even as indistinct crowd murmurs began to
surround us, the drekavac spoke in a nasal tone, “So, you’re Elle?”
Teeth tips showed with a sneer. “Dakarai will be so pleased when I
tell him we ran into you.”

“Just go away an—” Angie started to say, I
cut her off.

“Yes, I’m Elle.” Two fists clenched by my
side. “You can tell Dakarai I said hi, and I’m looking forward to
seeing him again. So why don’t you run off with your little
chick-lets there and go tell daddy, I’m waiting.” A coil of fear
tightened in my stomach.
What did I do?

“Well, well,” drekavac crowed, “you
are
something special, aren’t you? I can see why Dakarai is
so interested.” He sucked his teeth. “Yes, a tasty little appetizer
you’d be, spicy. I’ll be sure to pick those sweet little bones
clean for him. Or maybe we should go into the restroom so I can
sample that curvy menu of yours. Just look at those long legs, and
wings.” He made a sucking sound, flicked his pointed tongue over
his teeth. “I can taste them already.”

“Don’t talk to my sister like that, you
flappin pig!” Angie paused to breathe. “You’re not gonna get away
with this, security’s on the way. You’re going to jail.”

The drek cackled a laugh. “Jail, huh? Well,
we’d better hurry then. You must be Angelica, the sister. Why don’t
you join us in the restroom, Princess, let’s make it a family
affair. My friend over there likes that long brown hair of yours.
She’s been looking for a new wig.”

A wig? Angel hair! Oh no, it can’t be.

The drek added, “I must say, Angelica. You
look ripe. A little more curvy meat on you. Nice and ripe, indeed,
ready for pick’n. Let’s go have some fun, whattaya say?”

A crowd of angels started to form around us,
various comments chiming:

“Go away, drek.”

“Someone call security.”

“He’s an ugly one, isn’t he?”

“They should be banned from here.”

Thoughts formed words in my mind:
Starwings, Star-wings, Vyn, Vyn
, my jaw clenching to the
cadence of the words.

The packed hall began to move toward the
painted concrete walls, making room for something while they
chattered … And the reason became clear:

Vyn and Jaydenn were rushing toward us, wings
outstretched and pushing hard.

“So drek,” Angie said, “you’re about to meet
my husband. Hope it was worth it.”

Vyn slid across the polished floor, spun to
face the drek. With a knee down, head bowed, wings spread and one
fist on the concrete, he huffed out a breath at the floor as if he
was attempting to hold back a thousand horses. He finally looked up
at the drek, and let out a feral snarl, “Leave. Now.” His face was
trembling in some sort of controlled fury.

The other dreks had already backed off in
silence, too young and dumb to get involved.

“
Enough
,” Jaydenn huffed out as he
stood beside Angie. “I’m tired of the theatrics.” He stomped over
to the drek and swiftly wrapped a hand around the drek’s throat,
paused to give the stunned drek a jungle-cat smirk, then lifted
him, carried him across the hall and slammed the drek to the wall
surface with a
thwap
. Even as the drekavac strained for air,
Jaydenn growled from deep in his throat, “
You
. Have had
enough fun for one day.” He cocked his head, pushed the words out
through vice-clamped teeth, “Don’t you think?”

The drekavac tried to nod, but Jaydenn
tightened his grip. The drek’s black eyes began to bulge in his
skull.

Angie walked to Jaydenn, placed a hand
between his wings and said in a soothing tone, “Let him go, Jay. If
you kill him, you’ll break the treaty. You know that.”

A long pause as we all looked on … Jaydenn
finally released. The drek crumpled to the floor on hands and
knees, gasping, coughing and choking. Jaydenn leered down on him
and said, “You’re pathetic,” then kicked the drek like a garbage
sack.

Jaydenn and Angie, giggling, joking with each
other, made their way toward me.

The crowd began to disperse with more
comments:

“See, that’s how you do it.”

“Daddy, is he a football player?”

“He’s a big one.”

“He must be a StarWing, look at his
clothes.”

“Bet that drek won’t do that again.”

Even as the comments continued, I asked Angie
and Jaydenn, “Why are you two laughing?”

Angie grinned. “Did you see the look on that
drek’s face? It was funny. He looked all bug-eyed.” She pushed her
eyes out to mime the drek, and returned to normal on a chuckle.

“Don’t worry,” Jaydenn said to me, “they
can’t hurt you.” He angled a look back at the fallen drek and the
other dreks that had gathered around him. Uniformed security guards
were approaching them as Jaydenn added, “They just like to play
with your mind, and that one there’s goin’ to jail. Don’t listen to
a word they say, it’s all lies and deceit. They always try to push
us to break the treaty. If
they
break it, they’re finished
and the hunters’ll leave Boden. It’s a different story if we break
it. If we kill just one drek, the hunters would be allowed to hunt
everywhere, so we have to tiptoe around the garbage for a
while.”

“Well, they’re pretty good at messing with my
mind,” I said. Then something dawned on me. “But, Dakarai, he was
gonna hurt me?”

“That was a rare circumstance,” Jaydenn said.
“Wrong place, wrong time kinda thing.”

Tucking my hair behind my ear, I fell silent,
considering. The guards led the drek away by the crook of the arm,
the other dreks following along like baby chicks.

Jaydenn paced over to Vyn—Vyn still locked in
battle position—and pulled him out of his trance to stand. Jaydenn
said to Vyn, “We really need to work on that. You can’t be locking
up like that all the time.”

Vyn’s blue-glow eyes finally came back from
wherever he was. “I know. I can’t help it.” He dropped a frown of
embarrassment at the floor. My poor Vyn.

“Well, sis, let’s go get cleaned up,” Angie
said.

“What?” I said. “We need to tell Dad about—
wait, why isn’t Dad here? I mean how did you guys know we needed
you?”

“It’s funny story,” said Vyn. “Your dad
brought out those chips. You should’ve seen it. A bunch of purple
monsters. I couldn’t take it anymore and I started laughing out
loud. Then they all looked at me like they were about to stuff me
in a garbage can or something, so I got up and left. Some fan came
up to me out in the hall and told me what was happening. I went
back and got Jaydenn. We figured we could handle it. No reason to
spoil their day and worry your mother, so we didn’t bother telling
Phil. It’s a good thing we didn’t. He’d have killed that drek.”

Dad and his pranks, I see where Angie gets it
from. After pushing the image of a bunch of purple angels out of my
mind, I said, “But we still need to tell Dad.”

“We will,” Angie said. “That’s
all
we’ll tell him, right?”

Jaydenn gave Angie a curious look. “Whattaya
mean, that’s all?”

Angie’s eyes remained on me as she said to
Jaydenn, “Oh, nothing. It’s a sister thing.”

“Do you think it’s safe to go shower now,
after that, I mean?” I asked Angie.

“Of course it is,” Angie said, and turned to
Jaydenn. “You boys can wait outside the locker room for us, right?”
A hair flip as she flittered her lashes. “Be our big male
guards.”

Jaydenn looked as if he had painful gas or
something.

I said, “I’d feel much better if you two did
wait outside.

They gave us a couple of male eye rolls,
puffed a pair of sighs.

While we strolled along, thoughts brewed
about what Jaydenn had said, “Don’t worry, Elle, they can’t hurt
you.” Yeah, well, I wasn’t convinced of that. Mental torture could
be just as bad, worse even, and Dakarai was good at that game.

Walking alongside Vyn, I folded my arm around
his waist, leaned into him and tilted my head to his shoulder.

When I opened the refrigerator, there it was,
shining like an oasis to quench my desert mouth—the glass pitcher
of liquid heaven. Bathing in the refrigerated air, wearing short
yellow shorts and a girl-cut T-shirt, I felt like pouring the
entire pitcher down my throat.

As I filled my glass with ice and cucumber
water, the remembrance of the locker room from earlier came to
mind. Since the boys had decided to check out the field, they’d
waited outside the field entrance door for us. We’d heard them
voicing, “Hello ladies, hi, hello, hi,” over and over in a
deeper-than-natural tone, while the cheerleaders filed into the
locker room after halftime, giggling and joking as they strode
their long legs into the room.

They’d been so nice to us. One blond
cheerleader—almost too flawless, her name was Ginelle—had become my
favorite, possibly even a friend. She’d even given me one of her
uniforms, and delivered a kiss to my cheek while she did. Hopefully
we could meet again sometime, maybe go shopping, or go to Luscious
Berry Yogurt, or something. I don’t know.

Yeah, right. Leaning back against the kitchen
counter, I took a sip. How could such a magnificent angel want to
hang out with, me? But, she’d brought it up back in the locker
room; “We should go have lunch sometime. That would be so much fun,
don’t you think, Ellie?”

Uh, yeah! I had wanted to say, but her
question had sent me to la-la land, so I’d just nodded.
Stupid,
stupid, stupid
. I should’ve set a date. Thank Source I’d had
enough sense to get her phone number. I’d invite her over to meet
Dad and the rest of the family, soon.

Now, as I padded bare feet to the breakfast
nook table, forested dusk was setting outside the kitchen bay
window. Natural light softened the space, day fading away. Angie
was already at the table in her cotton sundress, her elbows on the
wood surface, chin propped on fisted hands, eyelids flagging as she
said, “Can you pour me a glass too, please, sis?”

After returning with her full glass, I sat
with her.

“What’d you think of the cheerleaders,
Ang?”

“What? Oh, yeah. They were nice.” She sipped,
set it down. “Maybe a little
too
happy.”

“I think it was the energy from halftime,” I
defended.

“Yeah, maybe.” Under droopy eyes, she blew a
breath. “I need to get some rest.”

With a nod of agreement, I turned to the bay
window. The sunset infused thin clouds over the mountains into the
most delicious palette of violet cream, pulling a long sigh from
me.

“What’s up, Elle?” Vyn broke my serene vision
as he strolled in, walked to the cupboards and pulled a crackling
bag. “We need some chips out there.” He brought a large wooden bowl
to the table, dumped some daisy chips.

Why do males always have to pull and tear
everything? Why do they have to be so noisy? Angie rubbed her
temples with a murderous look at Vyn as if she was about to rip his
wings off.

“What’s Mom doing?” I asked Vyn.

“She’s out there reading a book.”

“Do you actually think she’s gonna let you
crunch chips while she’s reading?” I pictured Mom on the white
chaise lounge by the fireplace, while the boys sat across the room
on the matching couch and loveseat, munching away.