Wings In Darkness

by Gregory Kay

Luke started counting off on his fingers.

  “Other than the Feds, there was Whitey, Joe, Kathy, and Allie Parks, Johnny Robinson, and Sam and Rhonda Gordon.”

  “Why didn’t you just round up half the damned town and take them with you while you were at it? Where are they, anyway?”

  “They’re not coming back.”

  Harry took God’s name in vain, and Pete went white, and unobtrusively leaned a hand against the nearest cruiser to support himself.

  “They’re all dead?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Luke told him, shaking his head, “but you will. Look, let’s get in a car where we can have some privacy; we need to talk.”

  Harry snorted, “No shit!”

  SATURDAY

  CHAPTER 36

  “So...” Fiona said, lying naked beside him on his bed and letting her voice trail off. The two had made love again, despite their numerous minor injuries, and now her head was on his chest as she sheltered in the crook of his right arm, one leg thrown over both his, and both their hearts breaking.

  “So nothing. I love you and I’m not going to give you up, especially now that you’re going to be the mother of my son.” Reaching across with his free hand, he brushed her hair back from her forehead, toying with her curls. “Stay with me.”

  “Luke, you know I can’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  Sighing hard and miserably, she said, “You know why! We’ve both got careers we can’t just walk away from.”

  She felt his muscles tense and saw his jaw set.

  “Alright. If you can’t walk away from yours, I’m willing to walk away from mine, if that’s what it takes.”

  “Luke, you can’t!”

  “Watch me.”

  “But this is your life – “

  “No.” He lightly tapped the tip of her nose with a finger, then kissed the spot. “This is my life, lying right here beside me. I had no life before you got here; I lost it over two years ago. You brought it back to me, like the sun turning night into day.” He shook his head. “I was like a vampire in an old movie I saw on the late show once, who said he hadn’t seen the sun for hundreds of years. I forgot for a long time just how precious that is.”

  “Don’t kiss my nose,” she whispered, her eyes full of tears.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too big.”

  “It is not.” He promptly kissed it again. “It’s beautiful and perfect, just like the rest of you.” With a grin he put his finger beneath his own nose and pushed it up. “What do you want? A little pugged-up pig nose like this? Oink-oink-oink. Wouldn’t that look silly on you?”

  “Stop it!” She slapped him on the chest. “Don’t you dare make me laugh!” With a sob, she added, “I’m just too damned miserable.”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  “Luke...” Her breaking voice was interrupted by the irritating ringing of his cell phone. When he made no move to answer it, she asked, “Aren’t you going to get that?”

  Ring...

  “Nope; it’s not important.”

  “How do you know?”

  Ring...

  “Because nothing is as important as this, right here and now.”

  Ring...

  “Just answer it...please.”

  “Why?”

  Ring...

  “It’ll give me time to think.”

  Luke sighed and muttered what sounded vaguely like an obscenity, but he picked up the phone.

  “Hello? Oh, hey. Look, this isn’t a good...yeah?” He turned and looked curiously at Fiona. “Yeah, she’s here...”

  “It’s not my mother, is it?” she asked, thinking, that’s all I need! but Luke shook his head and kept talking.

  “Oh yeah? Uh-huh...yes...” Suddenly he was grinning like an idiot. “Yeah, I think she just might be! Here, let me put her on.”

  Sticking out the receiver, she needlessly said, “It’s for you.”

  Wondering what in the world was going on, she took it.

  “Hello? Yes, speaking.” Her brows raised and her eyes widened with surprise, and the conversation continued for several minutes. Finally, she said, “I need to think about this.” Looking at Luke, propped up on one elbow and lying as naked as his obvious hopefulness beside her, she told the caller, “Wow, this is a big step. How long do I have to give you my decision?”

  A few inconsequential remarks later, she handed his phone back, a dazed look in her eyes.

  “Rodger’s dad just offered me a job as managing editor of his tabloid.”

  “And?”

  Looking at him levelly, she asked, “Is this the result of you calling in the favor he owed you?”

  “No, I haven’t spoken to him since we brought Rodger home.” Seeing her obvious suspicion, he said, “I promise I had nothing to do with this beyond introducing you two.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes, I promise; swear to God, cross my heart and hope to die, the whole bit. You impressed him all on your own. I’d hire you in a minute, of course, but just out of curiosity, what reason did he give?”

  She grinned, but just a little; her mind was going a million miles an hour.

  “I guess my experience at The Arrow piqued his interest, and he did a little research to find out where I’d graduated from, then went to the paper’s website and read my archived articles. He said that, if I could make the kind of stupid crap Sidney has been assigning me sound like news, I could do anything.” She took a deep breath. “The base salary is more than a little small, but he promised me a percentage of circulation in addition, as a carrot to increase sales; he seems to think I can do that.”

  “I told you. So you’ll stay here then?”

  “No. I’ve got to go back to New York.”

  Luke’s jaw dropped.

  “Even with the job offer here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So,” he heaved a big sigh, “I guess I’ll go up there then.”

  “No, Luke, you can’t. What about what you owe the people in Mason County?”

  “Well, considering I fought the United States Government, black-ops soldiers and monsters, and traveled through time and space to help save the world from being eaten by the Old Ones, I’d say they’ve already been paid back with interest.”

  “They won’t know that; they won’t see it that way.”

  He shrugged.

  “You will and I will, and that’s all that matters to me. I love you, Fiona, and I’m not going to lose you, whatever it takes.”

  “You’re not losing me; you know I love you too, more than I ever thought it was possible for one human being to love another.”

  “But how are we going to work this then? Are we going to try a long-distance...with a child?”

  “No.” Seeing his face starting to fall, she grabbed his hand as the thoughts she had been wrestling with finally snapped into place. “I’ve got to go back to New York; there’s something I have to do.”

  MONDAY

  CHAPTER 37

  New York, New York

  “Well,” Sidney said, leaning over her desk and looking at her laptop screen, “I’ll have to admit that is interesting!”

  Standing beside him, Fiona smiled, and it took no effort at all.

  You’re damned right it’s interesting!

  The Sheriff had returned her computer to her, after sitting down with her and Luke for two hours Saturday evening and mutually deciding what could and could not be talked about, in order to insure everyone’s safety. The government installation – now a huge crater in the ground that had filled with water from Potter's Creek and become a new pond – was obviously off-limits, as was the presence of the defunct black-ups unit. Anything to do with inter-dimensional travel was another blatant no-no, of course. Still, that left her with the ubiquitous ‘men in black,’ including some stills from the video surveillance footage; the wave of animal mutilations and conjunctivitis; Mothman, the black cats, and various other cryptids were in, of course,
as was the occult angle and the four missing occultists. The latter two items were the key to her story.

  Fiona still had her pictures – thank God I thought to load them into the computer, since those bastards took my camera! – and those of the igloo turned into a temple to Satan were particularly hard-hitting and became the focus of the article she had written on the plane Sunday afternoon. Stuffing in her earbuds and putting on some eerie tracks from the group Nox Arcana to set the mood, she started typing as soon as her United flight cleared the Charleston airport, and had the first rough draft completed by the time she touched down at LaGuardia before dark. She had it finished well before eleven, and slept like a baby, dreaming of Luke.

  Remembering that dream made her smile broaden.

  In between calling her mother to let her know a highly-edited version of what had happened, and contacting her insurance agent to make sure she was compensated for her Jag, she and Luke had spent most of their time in bed, or else sitting on the front porch looking at the river: sometimes talking, and other times just holding each other.

  She remembered him driving her to the airport, and the look on his face when he kissed her goodbye in the departure lounge...

  “I particularly like this,” Sidney said, his irritating voice jerking her back out of her pleasant reverie, “This occult tie-in with the animal mutilations and the Mothman, along with the Indian curse, will work. Go ahead and forward it to Joe.”

  She blinked, just once. Even though she had fully expected this, had planned for it even, her boss’ sheer gall still shocked her to actually hear it.

  “So you’re saying, after all I went through to get this story – wrecking my car, having to run for my life, nearly being raped, then nearly blown to pieces – after all the research and all the photos, he gets it?”

  He straightened up and shrugged with a knowing smirk.

  “You know how it is, Fiona; Joe’s got the experience to handle something like this. Someday, it’ll be you...if you ever learn to cooperate, to do a little give-and-take, you know...”

  She didn’t miss the meaning in his look or in the way his voice trailed off.

  “Look, Sidney, this story is important to me; it’s the biggest thing I’ve ever been involved in. I want it, and I want it bad. What do I have to do to get it? Just tell me, okay? Just give it to me straight, up-front, so I’ll know what I’m getting into.”

  His eyes widened with surprise, and he cautiously reached out a hand, as if trying to pet a dog he wasn’t sure would bite or not. When she made no move to rebuff him, he brushed his fingers through her curls before resting the hand on her shoulder, caressing the side of her neck with his thumb. A hint of triumph wormed its way into his tone when he told her, “You know what I want.” His hand slowly slipped down farther, until it was cupping her breast. She made no move to resist, but looked demurely down at the floor as his other hand joined it on the opposite side of her chest, tentatively feeling and squeezing.

  “So you’re saying that if...if I have sex with you, this story is published under my byline?”

  He nodded, and licked his lips in anticipation with a tongue that looked like a slimy pink slug while his fingers tweaked her right nipple through her bra.

  “Yeah…that’s what I’m saying…same as for all the other girls; you come over to my place after work, and show me a good time – a really good time – and it’s all yours.”

  “That’s what I needed to hear,” she said before stepping a little closer, knocking his groping hands aside with her forearms, and slamming her knee upward, driving it squarely into his balls for all she was worth.

  Sidney blanched, doubled over and collapsed to his knees, in too much pain to even manage a scream, and promptly retched up the bagel he had for breakfast all over her office floor. Fiona nimbly skipped back out of the way to keep her shoes from being spattered, then walked around him to her desk and tapped a few keys on her computer before hitting Send and closing the machine.

  “I’m glad you said that, Sidney; did you even bother to notice you were standing right in front of my web-cam? I caught it all right here, and I just emailed it to the Board of Directors and copied my attorney on it; if they don’t shit-can your sorry ass by the end of the day, then I’ll release it and let it go viral on the web, and see how they like that publicity, along with the sexual harassment lawsuit I’ll be filing regardless.”

  Dropping the computer into her bag, already stuffed with everything she needed from her office, she added, “The story goes with me too; there’s a new paper on the block, and I’ve been asked to edit it, so I guess you can consider this my resignation. Have a nice day, asshole.”

  After one more gesture she turned and left; she supposed putting the sole of her shoe against Sidney’s fat ass and shoving him forward to fall face-down and skid on his nose through his own vomit might have been overkill, but she couldn’t deny the satisfaction. She would also, until her dying day, swear she distinctly heard Uncle Pat’s ghost laughing his fat Irish ass off with unrestrained glee.

  3 WEEKS LATER

  CHAPTER 38

  “You’re looking better than I’ve seen you look since my brother died.”

  In the kitchen of her family’s modest house in a residential section of Brooklyn, Fiona didn’t glance up from putting the good china on the best tablecloth, but she smiled at her mother’s words.

  “I feel better than I have since then. In fact, I feel better than I ever remember.”

  “Uh-huh,” the red-haired woman agreed as she arranged the silverware, “This Luke of yours must be someone pretty special to sweep you off your feet like this. That’s not like you.”

  Her daughter stopped for a moment.

  “No,” she admitted, “It’s not like me at all...but I like it.” Then she hugged herself as if to prove it.

  Glancing at the door first, Maurine Pelligatti lowered her voice to keep it from carrying outside the dining room.

  “Obviously; too obviously, maybe.”

  The words and the tone were both loaded.

  “What do you mean?”

  Another glance at the door.

  “Fiona, are you pregnant?”

  Not knowing what else to say and not at all sure what her mother’s reaction would be, she simply said, “Yes.”

  Maurine pursed her lips and nodded.

  “I thought so. Are you sure it’s his?”

  “Mother!” she hissed with outrage, “What do you think I am!”

  “Shh!” She emphasized the admonition by putting a finger to her lips and flicking her eyes toward the door once more. “I don’t think it’ll be for the best to involve your father in this conversation!”

  Fiona nodded; that, she could definitely agree with.

  “What I meant,” her mother continued, “was that you had a...relationship…with that son of a bitch Cliff for a long time, and just broke it off recently.”

  “I hadn’t had a chance to be with that bastard for a couple of weeks before I went to West Virginia, and I had my period during that time. It belongs to Luke, no question.”

  “What belongs to Luke?” her father asked casually, strolling into the kitchen during a commercial, just in time to catch the last sentence. Both women reflected that it was fortunate he didn’t catch anymore than that, because Frank Pelligatti tended to be more than a little old-fashioned when it came to his only daughter.

  “His house,” Maurine said quickly, never missing a beat, “Luke owns his own home.”

  “It’s right on the river too: the Ohio River,” Fiona put in, knowing full well from experience how to play the game, “We sat in the swing on the front porch and watched the boats go by.”

  Frank raised his thick black eyebrows, looking for a moment like he was trying to make them catch up to his equally dark, if somewhat receding, hairline.

  “Riverfront? A guy that young? How old did you say he was, anyway? Twenty-nine?”

  “Twenty-seven,” she told him, and he sho
ok his head as he opened the refrigerator door and reached for a beer.

  “Geez, they must pay cops pretty well down there!” Twisting the cap off and flipping it with the unerring accuracy of long practice into the trash, he suddenly paused, the bottle halfway to his lips. “He’s not – “

  “No, Dad, he’s not on the take,” Fiona sighed, even though that was a reasonable question coming from a member of the NYPD, “It’s not like it’s a mansion or anything, and besides, he inherited it from his grandfather. Anyway, real estate is a lot cheaper down there; it’s not exactly New York, you know.”

  He took a sip, then pointed at her with the index finger of the hand he was holding the bottle with.

  “Yeah, I know, and that’s another thing; do you think you’ll be happy down there in...in...what was the name of that place again? Pleasant Point?”

  “Point Pleasant, like the one in Jersey,” her mother helpfully filled in, and he nodded.

  “Yeah, Point Pleasant. A little place like that, some hicksville in the mountains of West Virginia...”

  “It’s not in the mountains, Dad; those are a couple of hours away. There are hills, sure, but you can sit on the front porch and look right across the river into Ohio, close enough you can see people walking around over there.”

  “Still, I mean…you grew up here in the city. What the hell will you do for excitement down there?”

  She had to turn her head so he wouldn’t see her smile. If only you knew!

  “There’s more excitement there than what you’d think.” And I’m not lying about that! “And, if we want something a little more upscale, there are three small cities barely an hour in each direction, and Columbus, Ohio is only two hours north of it. You can get to any of them faster than you can cross New York.”

  “You’ve really thought this out, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Hey,” he said, coming to her and spreading his arms, “I just want to make sure you’re happy, kid; nothing but the best for my little girl.”