Before Beasts, There was Time-- Book 10

Back to a Team

He woke up to rainfall on his face. Each came like a mini slap of chill. Shivering, he rolled his head over and found Kenny hunched up beside's him in a ball of wings.

Kai's stomach rumbled. Kenny's now gray head popped over his top most pair of wings.

"Good, you're awake." He waved a hand at the sky. "There. Water."

Groaning, Kai pushed himself up. All things considered, he didn't feel too bad for having burnt himself out in the middle of a radioactive zone during winter and then getting rained on. Wait, rain?

Kai raised a hand to catch some drops. Winter rain should be freezing, and therefore excruciating to him, but rather it was little more than an uncomfortable sting.

"It's warm," said Kai.

"Probably has something to do with the radioactivity," said Kenny. "Frankly, I'm surprised you're not showing any symptoms of radiation poisoning. At the levels you've been exposed to, you should...ahh."

Kai couldn't see Kenny's eyes behind his messy mop of hair, but he imagined they'd be widened with realization.

"Fire is heat, which is an excitement of atoms and electrons. Radioactivity includes unstable elements which can give off energy or heat as they decay. Many elements naturally break down when exposed to high levels of energy." His shoulder pair of wings, a third the size of Kai's, fluttered. "Your body has to be built to withstand exposure to high levels of energy and flying, even to the point of thriving off of such high temperatures, so, naturally, it would be more durable to radioactivity than the average Joe."

Having only caught on at the last sentence, Kai just focused on getting his wings over him. Warm or not, the rain still stung. Fatigue still dragged on him, but at least his skin hadn't turned gray and the markings on his red feathers were still gold.

A sense of urgency tugged at the back of his mind. But when had he not felt urgent?

"I totally get how you ate Tyson and his grandpa out of the house," Kenny was saying. "I'm feeling a little stronger, but oh my gosh, I could eat a cow! People even sound appetizing right now—oh crud, you don't think we're cannibalistic, do you? Wait, since we're a different species now, wouldn't that just make us predators?"

Kai tucked his feet beneath him and rolled onto his haunches to test his strength. His thigh muscles twitched a bit, but settled down quickly. He'd be able to stand.

The urgency tugged harder. Kai hunched his shoulders, a memory tickling just out of his grasp. He had known the army would be outside Kenny's bubble. Other things trickled in too, like a picture of a tree in a lone field and the idea that the spirit world was on this world, just out of sight—

He jumped up so quick, black dots burst across his vision.

"We need to get to the others. Now."

Kenny squinted up at him, and Kai could tell because his bangs fell back as he looked up. "Aren't they on an island some five hundred miles north of here? Kai, I don't even know if I can walk out of this crater let alone fly anywhere, and it's freezing up there. You're not exactly the picture perfect image of energy either, I can see your knees shaking."

Kai grit his teeth. "I don't know, but—" an idea hit him. "Wait, you can manipulate space. Can't you, like, make us a wormhole there or something?"

Kenny's jaw dropped. "Are you kidding me? I don't even know how to move all these things on me yet, and wormholes are nothing like they are in the movies. The gravity alone—"

"Then you can figure it out as we go. We need to start walking."

"Kai, I don't think you're—waah!"