Ryder's Angel

Chapter Five: Angel's Light: Angeline

Chapter Five: Angeline

Branches scratched my skin, but I barely felt them as I propelled myself upward after the mutant who threatened my family.

When I was on top of the tree house, Ugly was waiting for me, grinning wildly with his chipped fangs. His back was arched, as if he were about to launch himself away. I couldn’t let that happen. Today was his last.

I poised myself the same way, but only in defense. I was ready, perching on a tree branch in perfect balance, but Ugly was just as still. I didn’t like his expression, either – mocking, almost, on his dirty face. It looked evasive, like he didn’t want to fight. I wanted to fight. As a warning, I flexed my claws – the beauty of Onychokinesis. No one who saw these for the first time dared to cross me. But Ugly only pulled his lips tighter over his teeth and tensed.

But instead of charging at me, he did the opposite – Ugly turned and launched himself away from me. He flew off the tree house with superhuman speed, nothing but a blur of grey. I saw him with my enhanced mutant vision two hundred feet away on one of the very far away trees in the forest. Furious, I extended my white angel wings – just one was the length of my body – and took flight. Propelling myself at least eighty miles an hour, I pursued Ugly. When I came into his view, he took off again. We were only streaks of color as Ugly jumped from tree to tree, ground to ground – over fields, through forests, past towns – trying to throw me off. I was just bee-lining him, for he didn’t swerve once. But he was too fast for me – I couldn’t get hold of him.

This was what Ugly probably wanted, for he stayed clear of me the whole way. But I started to get panicked when we left fields and forests behind. We were moving so fast, maybe a hundred miles per hour. If I wanted, I could go from Florida to California in an hour or two. But I didn’t know where we were now, but we definitely weren’t in Rhode Island anymore.

Fields were replaced by roads, trees by buildings. I didn’t like this – where there were buildings and roads, there were people. And where there were people, there were humans. Where we could get caught.

My heart relaxed a little when the big city passed and more country land came into view. Still Ugly’s back was to me, just a blur to the right and then to the left, up and then down. Little country houses, a few barns – no, wait, the city was coming back.

But I wasn’t expecting Ugly to turn on his heel in front of a school and jump straight at me.

The impact of our bodies was enough for a nuclear bomb. Even I felt the shockwave. Ugly wrapped his arms around me, but my wings were closed around both of us. We plummeted not to the ground but to the second floor of the school. We twirled and twisted madly. The whistling wind and snarling mixed with shrill screams.

I knew what they were seeing: an angel locked in battle, coming like a meteor toward them at fifty miles an hour.

We smashed into the building, shattering glass and breaking chunks of the brick wall. My body ached as the blow of that weighed down on me. Ugly was still clinging to me, forcing me down so he could land the deathblow. My wings stung as glass burrowed into the feathers, my skin burned and was sticky with blood. Hair was in my face, my mouth, my nose.

Ugly snarled in my ear and we tumbled into a desk, knocking useless knickknacks onto our heads. A stapler missed my finger by an inch. The humans’ screams were so loud it seemed as if all of them were right next to me, instead of across the room. And Ugly landed on top of me, so I pulled in my wings and tucked in my legs. His nasty face a few inches in front of my own, I extended my legs with as much force as a wrecking ball. Ugly flew through the wall and out the windows in the hall of the school. I flipped up to my feet so fast it would have made a human go unconscious with dizziness and sprinted out the door that was now gone. I vaulted the chunks of glass and window remains to find myself on the roof.