Before These Wings (Wings Book 1)

by Wendy Knight

  Before These Wings

  Wendy Knight

  Before These Wings © copyright 2017 Wendy Knight

  Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Also in the Wings Series

  Before These Wings

  With These Wings

  Beneath These Wings

  Coming Soon

  Of These Wings

  Cauldron’s Wings

  Chapter 1

  PHOENYX CROUCHED LOW OVER THEIR ATTEMPT at a garden, but since the A-bomb had gone off in space trying to kill the Garce, everything was dead. Food hardly grew.

  What did grow, the Garce trampled when they rampaged through what was left of the city. How an alien made of shadows and darkness could mash things underfoot was something Phoenyx couldn’t wrap her mind around.

  “Hurry. I don’t want the Garce to show up.” Her sister, Cherish, danced nervously from foot to foot, keeping watch and trying to see every way at once. “Have you noticed the sky lately? It’s sort of a weird purple.”

  “I would hurry faster if I had help,” Phoenyx muttered but knew someone had to keep watch. It was too dangerous not to. “The purple sky is probably just a side effect of the failed attempt to blow the Garce out of the sky. I think… I think there are potatoes here!”

  That would be a first. She hadn’t been able to grow anything in weeks. Excitedly, she dug through the dirt with her fingers because she didn’t trust the shovel to not mangle everything.

  “Phoenyx… hurry,” Cherish said. There was real fear in her voice, and Phoenyx risked a glance up into the shadows. She didn’t see them at first, and went back to digging, but some subliminal instinct made her look again.

  Red, glowing eyes.

  “Phoenyx, run!” It was Cole’s voice. Cherish had already taken off, abandoning her post and her little sister.

  But the potatoes.

  Frantically, Phoenyx dug faster, fingernails tearing and bleeding. She pulled one from the earth and started on the second, checking the Garce’s progress.

  There were two now. Maybe more. Completely invisible in the darkness.

  Shots fired, bullets penetrating the shadows, but the Garce just seemed to absorb them. They shrieked and yelped and turned angrily toward the source, but weren’t any worse for it.

  Phoenyx pawed at the dirt, almost there, so close, so close. Her hunger made it impossible to leave the potato behind, even with the threat of an un-killable alien so close.

  The Garce attacked. Cole shot again and again, wasting precious ammo, and she was pretty sure she heard his best friend, Keven, yelling too. She scrambled backward on hands and feet, crab-walking — like that could possibly save her — potatoes still clutched in her hand.

  “Phoenyx, get up!” Enika bolted in through the little garden gate, jerked Phoenyx to her feet, and dragged her backward. Putting herself exactly in harm’s way. Because she was the best friend all other best friends attempted to be.

  Phoenyx whirled and ran, but she knew they couldn’t outrun the Garce. The things moved like lightning and jumped from shadow to shadow. She braced herself for their teeth in her back, claws knocking her down. She waited for the pain.

  It didn’t come.

  From above, bright, fiery, roiling balls of metallic blue shot past her head and embedded in the Garce behind her. The Garce already mid-leap. Phoenyx shoved Enika one way and dove the other as it crashed to the ground where they’d been and slid, devouring all the light and everything living in its path. Phoenyx scrambled to her feet and turned in a circle, looking for whatever weapon those balls had come from.

  “Phoenyx!” Enika screamed.

  Too slow, Phoenyx turned to see another Garce roaring toward her. She turned to run but knew she’d never make it, and again braced herself for pain. She knew what these things could do. She’d seen them at work before.

  But again, the pain didn’t come and the metallic, roiling balls flew over her head, hitting the Garce and knocking it dead, burning it from the inside out as it screeched and writhed.

  Enika grabbed her hand and tugged her away, racing for the safety of the roof. The Garce weren’t very good climbers. It had been the human race’s saving grace. Except for the fact that the trees were all dying and the buildings were crumbling.

  They shoved their way through the door hanging on its hinges and pushed it shut behind them, tugging dilapidated furniture to block the way so the Garce couldn’t get in so easily. “Where did those weapons come from?” Phoenyx asked, breathing hard. “Did you see?”

  Enika bounded up the stairs. “I saw the ball things. I didn’t stop to stare up at the sky like some other person that I could happily throttle right now. They almost got you!”

  Phoenyx hung her head in shame. It was stupid. She shouldn’t be alive right now. If not for Enika… and for whoever threw the metallic balls, she wouldn’t be.

  Cole met them halfway up the stairs. He grabbed Enika’s shoulders, looking for injuries as he shoved her dark curls away from her face. “Are you okay? You almost made me an only child, Enika!”

  She nodded. “Just some cuts and bruises. Get off, I’m fine.”

  She shoved past him, leaving Phoenyx in her wake. Phoenyx met Cole’s eyes as heat burned over her, like his gaze sent fire through her soul. “Are you okay?” he asked softly. She nodded, still feeling the shame of her stupidity, and he crushed her to him in a hug, his hands smoothing her hair. “I almost lost you, Phoenyx. I kept shooting—”

  “I know.” She hugged him back, her tremors subsiding under his embrace. “I know. I’m sorry. But, look what I got!” She pulled back to show him her hands, still holding tightly to the potatoes.

  Keven, who leaned against the wall at the top of the stairs, sighed. “Those were worth dying for?”

  Phoenyx shook her head. “Those are worth living for. Anyone hungry?”

  “We’re not going back out there to bake a potato, Phoenyx.” Enika crossed her arms over her chest and glowered. “We’re not going out there ever again.”

  “I have to find my sister. What if the Garce—”

  “Your sister took off and left you,” Keven pointed out. “Maybe she’s okay on her own.”

  Phoenyx hid the hurt his words caused, telling herself she should be used to it by now. Cherish’s first priority was always Cherish. Even when Dad and Tresa had been killed, Cherish couldn’t even be bothered to help look for the bodies. Phoenyx had looked alone and never found them. Just blood.

  A lot of blood.

  “I saw her make it into a house,” Cole said, eyes still searching Phoenyx’s face. He saw her pain, even way down deep where she tried to hide it. “She’s okay.”

  “Great.” Phoenyx nodded, trying to hide her relief behind sarcasm. “So can we discuss where those weapons came from? And where we can get one? Because that’s the only thing I’ve ever seen kill a Garce.”

  “I didn’t see it. I
was watching the horror below,” Cole said dryly.

  They all looked to Keven, who shrugged. “I was still trying to kill things.”

  Phoenyx backed toward their barricade. “We need to see what it was.”

  “It’ll be long gone now, Phoenyx. And no, since you seem to have lost your mind, we do not go out after a Garce attack. There could be more.” Enika’s lips tightened.

  “But that weapon is a game changer, Enika. We have to see what it was. It could—it could save us all!” By this time, Phoenyx was at the door, already shoving furniture out of the way. Cole watched silently and she could see the gears turning in his head, debating and analyzing. Probably weighing the need to argue with her against her stubbornness and the pointlessness of it all.

  Enika didn’t debate. She heaved a long-suffering sigh and bounded back down the stairs. “She’s not going to change her mind.”

  Phoenyx paused. “You can’t come.”

  Enika gaped at her. “Don’t start with me, woman. I just saved your tail out there.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not safe—”

  “No kidding.” Enika cut her off. “Help me move this. You’re a strapping young girl.”

  Phoenyx pushed obediently, wondering if they were right, wondering if she was about to get them all killed. But those weapons…

  Cole gave up and came to help, too. Keven disappeared, and seconds later they could hear him clomping around on the roof. They swung the door open and went outside; Phoenyx still clutched the potatoes. She couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t been hungry. Two potatoes wouldn’t fill the four of them, but it would help.

  Cole raised his gun. He was seventeen, and before the invasion, he had only shot for fun in ranges and competition with his dad. Now his dad was dead, and Cole pretty much considered the gun an extension of his own arm. He turned in a slow circle, and as Phoenyx stepped off the porch, she could see Keven on the roof, but his gun wasn’t raised, for probably the first time ever.

  No, he stared at something in the yard, mouth hanging open.

  Phoenyx tucked her potatoes in her hoodie pocket, wondering absently why she hadn’t done that from the beginning, and reached for her gun. She had never seen a Garce body before. Never heard of one even being killed. She almost didn’t dare turn the corner to see what had Keven in shock.

  Cole went first, as Enika muttered about why she didn’t have a weapon. Phoenyx knew why — Enika had been trying to get to her before the Garce did. There hadn’t been time to grab weapons.

  Cole stopped abruptly, and Phoenyx ran into his back. He was solid muscle from months fighting to survive, but skinny. Too skinny.

  Starvation would do that to a person.

  She peeked around him, noticing first that the sky was a hazy purple unlike anything she’d ever seen. And then the green. So much green. The grass was bright, whereas before it had been straw-like and dead. Everything had been dead. Phoenyx’s garden which had been fighting to survive for months was full to bursting, food overflowing from plants that definitely hadn’t been there moments before when she’d nearly died for a potato. She almost dove for the food, mouth already watering, but Cole held her back, and she reluctantly tore her gaze from the bounty in front of her.

  To the bodies of the Garce. Or what had been. They were nothing now — picked clean. As if in slow motion, she raised her eyes to the sky above them.

  “Fairies?” Enika breathed.

  They were smaller than Enika, the size of children. Sparkling metallic tattoos wound their way across every surface of exposed, pale blue skin and around their eyes. Long blue hair shimmered in the darkness.

  And wings.

  Wings arching high above them — black and silky with the same metallic sparkles running through them — held the creatures in the air. They were easily the most beautiful thing Phoenyx had ever seen, even covered in black, inky Garce blood.

  Tremors shook her whole body, and she wasn’t sure if it was delayed shock or absolute fear. She saw Cherish and her mother standing across the street, watching with mouths open, and her trembling increased.

  Fear, then.

  “Don’t be afraid,” one of the creatures said; her voice was musical and soothing like a lullaby. “We’re here to help. Look what we’ve given you.” She spread her hands wide, encompassing the lush yard and the garden. “We’re here to protect you from these monsters.”

  Her hands were covered in blood.

  Between one blink and another, the alien went from the sky above the Garce bodies to right in front of Phoenyx. “You’re such a pretty little thing,” she cooed, one long, blue fingernail tracing its way around Phoenyx’s eyes. Never mind the fact that Phoenyx stood at least a head taller than she did. “You’d be so pretty as one of us.”

  Phoenyx jerked away, eyes widening in horror. “What?”

  From above, she heard Keven cock the rifle.

  “Aylin.” The other one spoke sharply, and the sound sent waves of fear down Phoenyx’s back. “Control yourself, please.”

  Aylin flew backward, eyes wide and deep, metallic blue against her pale face.

  “I’m sorry.” The other one flew closer as well, pushing Aylin behind her. “She’s not met many of you. This is our first territory.”

  “Who are you?” Cole raised his gun. His hands didn’t shake as Phoenyx’s did. Enika had a death grip on her arm, like she could hold Phoenyx away from them.

  “We’re Empyreans. We come from a faraway world, hunters of what you call the Garce. We’re here to save you.”

  Chapter 2

  COLE COULDN’T WRAP HIS MIND AROUND the creatures in front of him, or the fact that the street had filled with probably everyone left in the city. And all those people? They were like the adoring fans of a rock star.

  Enika had backed away so she was against the cracked siding of the house they’d taken shelter in. Phoenyx still stood in place, glaring fiercely even as she shook uncontrollably.

  He understood. Maybe it was the fact that their first impression had been of these Empyreans covered in blood, or maybe the fact that the last creatures to show up out of nowhere had killed half the world’s population. But—but they were so beautiful. And they’d given all this food.

  Food that everyone else in the street was eating as fast as they could, despite the fact that Phoenyx and Enika had been the only ones who’d spent any time there trying to save the garden.

  “Come,” the bigger one motioned toward them. “There is plenty for everyone.” She waved her hand and fruit trees, long since dead, bloomed to life before their eyes.

  Phoenyx gaped, her hands curling into fists like she could possibly resist the lure of fresh fruit.

  She couldn’t; none of them could. Even Keven came down from his perch, pausing next to Cole with his gun still raised.

  But in the end, they were all starving and dove at the tree in desperation, ripping the fruit from its branches. Juice dripped down Cole’s chin and he didn’t even care. It was like everything he remembered, bringing his taste buds back to life in one bite. Enika moaned, eyes closed, and Phoenyx had already reached for another.

  “Yes,” Aylin purred. “Eat, my beautiful ones. Eat your fill.”

  The taller one, who still hadn’t been named, called out in her musical, lilting voice, “Tell your neighbors. There is safety here now. We will not leave you unprotected.”

  The Empyreans hovered above them, watching in pure joy. The bones of the Garce were trampled underfoot in everyone’s rush for the food, and the symbolism wasn’t lost on Cole. Their demons, the things that had nearly destroyed them, were now crushed as nothing beneath their feet.

  “This changes everything,” Enika murmured around bites of peach. This had been their neighbor’s tree once. Their neighbor was long since dead, but Cole still felt guilty eating his fruit.

  “Does it?” Phoenyx wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her hoodie and eyed the Empyreans floating in the sky.

  “You can’t think the
y’re here to hurt us?” A woman, one Cole vaguely remembered from before the invasion a lifetime ago. “They saved you from that monster.”

  “First,” Phoenyx started, “it was an alien, just like them. Not a monster. And second, we’ll see.”

  The woman chuffed and disappeared into the crowd, complaining loudly about Phoenyx. Cole felt chills skitter across his spine and looked up to see the Empyreans watching them.

  Or more specifically, watching Phoenyx and Enika.

  Their mouths were curved in the hint of a smile but there was something sinister about it. Something dangerous but he couldn’t explain how. Nobody else seemed to have a problem with the Empyreans. And they were adults. Weren’t adults supposed to know things?

  “Now, my lovelies. We will hunt. We will eradicate the Garce for you and heal your tortured land. You will be free to live your lives again. Walk outside without fear.” The Empyreans raised their arms as if encompassing the entire city, and then shot away. They moved quickly in blinding bursts of speed. The Garce were fast, too, but not move-so-fast-you-couldn’t-see-them. They were move-so-fast-you-couldn’t-escape-them was all.

  “We can sleep without a weapon in our hand and someone keeping watch,” Enika murmured. Even Phoenyx looked encouraged by that. How long had it been since they’d really slept without keeping one eye open, waiting for the next attack?

  “You don’t have a weapon.” Phoenyx poked her.

  “I can’t find one I like,” Enika wailed. Phoenyx almost giggled, as close to a laugh as Cole had heard from her in weeks.

  Since her dad and sister had died.

  “Let’s load up on food. We’ll take as much as we can eat before it will go bad. Where should we stay tonight?” Phoenyx started pulling fruit from the tree and then moved on to the garden.

  They never stayed at Enika and Cole’s. Their parents had been killed in the house, and even though they had scrubbed for days, the reminders wouldn’t fade. While she’d never found the bodies of her father and sister, Phoenyx couldn’t go back home for the same reason. Her mother had moved to the biggest house in the neighborhood as soon as its owners had died, and they didn’t stay with her because she didn’t approve of Phoenyx having a boyfriend when she was only sixteen. She didn’t like Cole at all and barely tolerated Enika, although no one understood why.