Blackbird by Jessica MacIntyre Page B

heard a crash, followed by a scream. Chelle was inside and in pain. What if it was too late? Desperate he knocked louder calling out once again, then decided he needed to go in. If she was as bad off as Paul said she was, perhaps she couldn’t get to the door.
                  She screamed again and Robert’s hand immediately fled on its own to the top of the doorframe where he’d seen her reach for the key twice before. Once he had it he pressed it into the lock, his fingers fumbling and shaking clumsily. Chelle screamed again, and then all at once things inside the house grew silent.
                  The kind of silence that preceded something horrible, he could sense it. He opened the door afraid of what he was about to find, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw next.
                  Chelle was on the floor, passed out, her shirt in rags. For a moment his mind blocked out everything but the blood and the shirt and he reasoned that she’d been attacked, that someone had hurt her. And indeed she was hurt, but not in the way his confused mind was trying to convince him she was. He dropped to his knees on the floor across the room, pressing his back against the now closed front door, his mind reeling.
                  Wings…
                  Sprouting from the back of his employee were a set of massive black wings with feathers so thick and dark they filled an enormous amount of the space she was in. There was something else too. Not the feathers, but the space between the feathers themselves. A small amount of light coming in from the street hit them and they glinted in the darkness. They shone like polished steel.
                  He rubbed his eyes, covering them in disbelief for a few moments before opening them again, hoping they’d have disappeared. That it was all some sort of panicked induced hallucination. No such luck. When he opened his eyes again the wings were still there. So was the blood. It ran down her back in sheets, crimson and thick. He couldn’t be sure from his vantage point if she were breathing or not but he hesitated, not wanting to touch her and possibly injure her further.
                  Slowly, carefully, on his hands and knees he crawled to where she was, moved her long dark hair away from her neck and felt for a pulse. A small pool of blood had formed around her mouth and he held his breath. He was relieved to find that yes, indeed she had one. Curiosity and horror fought for control of his hands and as he turned his head to look at her back more closely, the metal in between the feathers lit up once again. Robert stretched out his fingers to examine them. Perhaps they weren’t real. In his confused mind he thought that perhaps this had been some sort of Halloween costume gone wrong. Only this was March, and there was blood and broken glass everywhere.
                  As he came into contact with the tip of a feather the wings asserted themselves, shaking and bristling at his touch as if frightened. Immediately he let his hand drop, and the things seemed to calm. He made his way to the couch, using the arm of it to boost himself up on wobbly legs to stand, but his knees buckled and gave way, and he fell backward into the softness of the Gwok’s grey sectional.
                  “Merciful god,” he whispered to himself, crossing his arms at his waist as he doubled over for a moment before staring at the wings once again. “Chelle…what are you?”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Eleven
                  Chelle guessed she had not been passed out very long because the wings were still protruding from her back, although without having willed them back into place it was hard to say how long they’d stick around. The blood on her skin felt like it had dried a bit and the wings were fully stretched. She could feel them