I glanced around in the dim twilight. All was quiet but for Mrs. Rodriguez on the third floor watching Telemundo with the window open.
I took one step. Then another. My phone was in my hand, ready to call 911. But my fingers wouldn’t cooperate, my gaze locked on those legs that were too perfect to be real. Surreal.
Maybe it’s a mannequin. Don’t go calling the police because a department store dumped their trash in your backyard.
If that got out at work, I’d never hear the end of it. Silly Lucy, Abby Taylor would say, shaking her head, her camera’s video eye recording everything. Not that word would get out. I barely talked to anyone at Ocean Alliance unless it was during meetings, and then it was to agree with what everyone else agreed on. Even if I didn’t actually agree. Even if I had ideas of my own.
Now I was close enough to see that it was definitely not a mannequin but a man, his body just as flawless as his legs. Unblemished. No scars, no freckles, no hair except for the thick mop of black curls on his head. Hair as black as his skin was white. He lay on his stomach (I averted my gaze from the perfect, tight roundness of his butt), eyes shut, his head pillowed on one muscular forearm. The other arm—his right—was stretched out on the ground as if he’d been reaching for something when he…
Fell?
I stepped over one of his wings—Oh my God Oh my God Oh my God—and stood as near the man as I dared. His face was mesmerizing. Like a Renaissance sculpture with full lips, angular cheekbones, and thick brows as black as ink. He had a Grecian nose and a jawline that was so straight and perfect, it wasn’t quite human.
‘Not quite human’? Silly Lucy, how about those wings?
I forced my eyes to accept what they were seeing.
The man wasn’t partially wrapped in a blanket.
The twilight shadows weren’t playing tricks on my eyes.
Two huge wings, covered in long, glossy black feathers, sprouted from between the man’s perfect shoulder blades. Each was easily as long as his body—their tips likely brushed his ankles when he walked. By my calculations, that would give him a wingspan of more than twelve feet.
He has a wingspan.
A little cry escaped me as the man’s full lips parted and then he made a sudden, torturous gasp for air, as if he’d been holding his breath for a long time. He moaned on the exhale, a sound that sent a shiver dancing down my spine, equal parts dread and a strange, tantalizing thrill.
Whatever this creature was, he was alive. I fumbled for my phone.
Who are you going to call, 911 or Animal Control?
A crazed laugh tried to burst out of me when the man opened his eyes. My laugh morphed into a strangled scream and the phone fell from my shaking hands.
His eyes were pure black. No irises, no whites. The pupils—if he had any—were lost in the inky black spheres. In those few seconds that felt like an eternity, I had the fevered notion that his eyes weren’t black at all but an absence. An absence of color. Light. Heat. Warmth.
Everything good in the world…
It was impossible to tell if he were looking at me, except I could feel that he was. He saw me. Those onyx orbs seared through me like an icy blade. I shivered and swayed, feeling myself pulled into that endless black. An abyss from which there was no return.
The man’s outstretched hand lifted off the ground, his long fingers reaching. His breath cut a harsh whisper, “Help me…”
I staggered back. The back of my head hit a brick wall and the blackness swallowed me whole.
Two
The torch’s flame flickers, sending shadows dancing across the walls. Bloodstained walls. The stones are slick with it. The floor too, and it’s so dark. Screams echo through the narrow corridor. His screams, rising from the very bowels of the temple.
The corridor widens to a chamber. Bodies—four of them—lie on the stony floor, pools of blood beneath their heads, matting their black hair. The fifth of their number, a woman
, is still alive. She is bound and gagged and on her knees. She faces the man who’s been screaming. He’s bound too, his hard, muscled flesh slashed open in a dozen places, his body broken by torture.
Their eyes meet across the blood-soaked stones, the air thick with death and pain. He shakes his head, agony bright and sharp in his dark eyes. A blade glints in the torchlight and is laid to her throat. His screams begin again, hoarse and ragged; he writhes against his bonds like a man possessed. A quick motion and blood flows in torrent, and the woman falls to the stones. They are made of shadow. She falls in, falls away, and the man’s screams—tinged with rage now—chase her down.
The screams become a raven’s cry, black wings outstretched…
Then a plea, choked with grief.
“Forgive me…”