by Ian Withrow
But even the relief of her aching joints was temporary. The moment she stepped from the shower the storm-clouds of worry and doubt brewing in her mind pulled her muscles taught with anxiety.
Her sluggish thoughts were interrupted by a loud, clear knock on the door. She paused, the suite was silent. She had just convinced herself she had imagined it when the knock came again, longer, louder, and more insistent.
Lauren forced herself to care just enough to seek out the source of the noise. She padded silently to the living room her wings dragging across the floor behind her. Lauren stood there dripping, gazing with flat, dull eyes at the door. As she watched, the handle turned and clicked, and the door started to open. She cocked her head to the side.
“Ms. Corvidae, are you there? I'm special agent Grant with the secret service,” a woman's voice, clear and strong, called out from behind the cracked door.
Lauren, and the suite, were silent as a tomb.
“We just want to make sure you're ok, no one is going to hurt you... ma'am?”
The intruder pushed the door slowly, it opened with a whisper to reveal the sharp eyes of a thirty-something Latina with a stark black, no-nonsense ponytail and a finely tailored suit. She held a handgun. It looked just like Dustin's had.
Lauren was surprised, not at the dull ache in her heart when she noticed the similarity, but that it didn't hurt worse. Could it?
No.
The woman stood there, unsure of how to respond to Lauren's passive, unclothed form in front of her.
“Ma'am... a-are you ok?”
While Grant averted her eyes awkwardly, Lauren took stock of the woman in front of her. She was pretty, but not beautiful. She had laugh lines, but a furrowed brow. She whispered something into her coat sleeve and returned her weapon to the holster on her hip.
Lauren moved her lips to respond, but her voice didn't work. She cleared her throat, hoarse from screaming for hours on end each night.
“M'fine,” she mumbled unconvincingly.
“I-is, is there... anything you need?”
Grant was looking at her now, at least, but she still seemed supremely uncomfortable.
Lauren didn't care.
Of course these people were going to check on her if she never answered the door or her phone. She should have expected them to intrude once more on the only solace she had left. Silence and solitude. At least alone she wasn't hurting anyone.
She knew that was a lie. She pondered for a moment the death toll that night at the airport. It felt like a lifetime ago, but she could picture with perfect clarity the bloodstained brass of the shell casings littering the tarmac. The fallen officers, dead in her name. The desperate, wretched men and women who had given their lives to reach her as well. Her burdened soul, already buckling, couldn't hold any more grief. Instead, it added just another layer of ice to her frozen heart.
“How many people have died because of me?”
She asked the question aloud, but didn't really know to whom. Nor did she expect an answer.
“In Chicago, ma'am?”
The fact that she'd had to clarify told Lauren everything she needed to know. She was still staring vacantly, and it was clearly unnerving her guest.
“We're um, we're working on a solution, ma'am.”
Something in the woman's words stirred Lauren's mind.
Solution.
But she remained silent, and the woman slowly retreated back to the door of the suite.
Before she left, she took one more concerned and confused look at Lauren.
“It's um, not your fault. Some of us still believe in you.”
With that, she bowed her head and took her leave. As the door clicked shut Lauren turned to face the floor to ceiling windows that lined one wall of the living room. They were clear glass overlooking the city.
Lauren knew the woman was wrong, as many others had been about her.
She turned to the boxes of clothes sitting on one of the couches. Each had a designer label on it, and probably cost as much as her old truck had. Absentmindedly she picked through the boxes, now nearly dry.
She uncovered a dress. Black and strapless, it reminded her of the last night she had seen Erin alive. She wanted to smile, or cry, but couldn't find the will to do either. Instead, she slipped into the garment. It was a close fit. By now she was used to people knowing intimate details about her like her dress size, it didn't even faze her.
She returned to the bathroom and pulled a hairbrush from the counter, analyzing herself in the mirror as she teased the knots and tangles from her long blonde locks.
Erin would have said she was beautiful. Before, that is.
She could almost see her speechless face, smell her perfume. She closed her eyes and treasured the brief stirring of warmth within her before it was replaced by icy despair once more.
She thought about her father. The man who had raised her despite the infidelity of her mother, despite the difficulties that he could have by rights walked away from.
She thought of his blood staining the time-worn stones of a thousand year old cathedral.
Her hair brushed to a luxurious shine, Lauren returned once more to the living room. She stared out the window at the city below.
She thought about Selimah, the woman who had been so frightened when she removed the scars of acid from her face.
She's probably dead too, Lauren thought, accused of witchcraft or disfigured again for someone else's slighted honor.
Looking around for something heavy, Lauren spied a dense marble statue on an end table. The smooth stone depicted a man and a woman locked in a lover's embrace. She lifted it, it was beautifully carved, flawless.
She thought about Gabriel, her beautiful brother. He had relied on her, and she had let him die. Her own invincibility had distracted her from his ailments. She should have been more careful, she accused herself mercilessly.
Spinning violently, she hurled the statue at the cool glass of the window, shattering it into a thousand jagged blades that blew out into the air like leaves in the wind. Strong gusts blew freezing air into the suite, swirling around the room and raising goosebumps on Lauren's arms and legs.
She thought about the boys in the horse barn. They had joyously told their parents she was an angel. Their family had invited her, a murderer, into their home.
“Round here we don't judge people for making mistakes, not as long as they fix them,” Charlie had said to her that morning not long ago.
Well she couldn't.
She knew that now. She couldn't fix her mistakes, but maybe she could pay for them.
She stepped to the ledge of the window, taking a moment to observe the vast urban sprawl before her. She stepped through the hole in the glass, her wings coming open. Her dress clung to her in the wind, the hem blowing wildly as she rose higher and higher, passing the highest point of the high-rise.
As she climbed, straining ever harder as the air thinned, her thoughts turned to Erin.
Lauren’s wings missed a beat as Erin's unbroken face came to her mind's eye. She nearly wept. She'd been haunted by her pallid, dead countenance for months, unable to recall her this way. Full of life and love and passion.
The dull drone of helicopters and sirens in the distance fell on deaf ears as the sleepy city took notice of her rising, shining figure in the sky.
She thought of the love that could have been, should have been. Of the journey cut short by her own stupidity.
Lauren hovered a moment, her wings wide, cupping the air as she held herself a thousand feet above the cruel streets below. Already she saw crowds gathering.
Yes, an angel these people had called her, and perhaps they were right. An angel of death, a harbinger of destruction, an embodiment of the cruel irony of good intentions. A dark beacon of the tragedy of power; that she alone should possess the ability to heal any wound, to bring someone back from the brink of death, and be powerless to stop the wanton destruction and shameless loss of life that followed her
like a specter.
“I miss you. It ebbs and flows, but I'm never free of it. I'm drowning.”
Whispering her confession to the empty air around her, she leaned back and folded her wings tightly.
For an instant she hung there, suspended by her last wing-beat like a feather in a strong breeze. But gravity tightened its grip on her and she began to fall.
Lauren closed her eyes, wondering as she plummeted from the sky if she would feel anything, or if she would finally be free.
Epilogue
Weyland looked out over the bustling roofs and busy streets of one of his favorite cities; Athens. People filled the streets, flowing like the current from some massive, sluggish river.
From his place upon the plateau all the sounds, sights, and smells of the city were diluted, reduced to a soft hum nearly 500 feet below.
He closed his eyes, soaking in the warm summer sun. The shining rays warmed his deep brown skin and filled him with peace. He breathed deeply of the salt air blowing in from the coast.
A deep thump sounded in the depths of his mind and a tremor flickered through the ground. Startled by the unfamiliar sound, Weyland opened his eyes..
The people below didn’t seem to have noticed.
His brow furrowed. Certainly if he had felt it then the masses before him should have. He looked around, trying to find something, anything out of order. But the gulls drifting in the sea breezes kept their lazy course. The waves on the distant shores kept their steady beat. The hustle and bustle of the city went on undisturbed.
The soft sound of rustling feathers drew him from his contemplation, making him turn.
She was as radiant as he had ever seen her. The woman standing there was tall, lean, and tan. Her golden hair was sunshine brought to earth, her eyes were honey flecked with bronze. A cream-colored silk dress accented her most noticeable feature; A pair of snow-white wings, covered in broad, sleek feathers.
She flashed him a dazzling smile from across the courtyard.
The sight of his beloved against the backdrop of the massive marble columns of their estate cleared all worry from his mind. Truly, she was a goddess, and a worthy companion for his own station.
He stepped towards her, his own face breaking into a smile from her infectious grin.
Thump.
This time the sound hit him like a fist in the gut. He stumbled from the blow and shook his head to clear the ringing it had left in his ears. Worried, he looked back up at his bride.
She looked... different. The smile on her face seemed more forced, less warm. The Grecian morning lost a bit of its heat as the sun paled for a moment.
But she was there, still waiting for him.
He struggled towards her, his legs growing heavier with every step. His temper flared, and he shook himself. His powerful muscles flexed and suddenly he was free of the unseen burden upon him. The sun was once again warm and bright, and he could move just as easily as he ever had.
The sweat dotting his brow and his heavy breathing were the only physical side effects of the unknown weakness he’d experienced.
He looked down at himself. Everything appeared normal. His towering, seven-foot physique was as muscled and strong as it ought to be, his dark skin tight over sculpted flesh.
He recoiled when he again laid eyes upon his wife. Her shining golden hair had been replaced with wild, lightly curling darkness. Her eyes matched her new hair, as did her wings. The snowy feathers that he was used to looked like they were freshly dipped in the deepest black he had ever seen.
Her smile was a faint, cruel curl at the edge of her lips. Her arms were outspread, waiting for him, but he felt no welcome there. He took an involuntary step backwards.
As he did so, she spoke.
“Weyland please, I need you.”
Her familiar voice was like velvet to his ears, enticing him.
“Weyland.”
As she spoke, she returned to the form he was used to. His shining maiden once again. She sounded desperate.
A mere twenty feet separated them.
He sprinted towards her, driven by a sense of urgency he couldn’t explain. His strong legs propelled him at inhuman speeds but the distance between them seemed only to grow.
Frustrated, he pushed himself, running harder and harder. She was speaking, but the wind rushing past his ears drowned out her words.
Thump.