Jinn arched his back and growled with a wave of fury, tensing his thick muscles against the steel of the net that kept him captive. The metal creaked ominously as Jinn tried to unfurl himself from his hunched position on the floor.
'Stop,' warned Scott, a stocky lad from the next farm over. He had been one of Mike's friends, always the first to jump on a dare and always the one to push the limits recklessly. He had been the first to laugh coldheartedly when she'd fallen from the tree and broken her arm, mimicking her cry when Mike had run to the cottage for Phoibe. She'd never cared for him much after that, but put up with him for Mike's sake.
'Or what? You're going to scratch my ass with that pitchfork?' Jinn chuckled, his anger turning to wry amusement as he wrenched at a link in the net and caused the metal wire to stretch a little. Most of the group gathered in the cottage had moved to the far end of the room, sitting around the fire Phoibe had brought to life in the stone hearth as they muttered in subdued tones and glanced at him from time to time. Scott had offered to stand watch over Jinn, a cocky grin forever tugging the corners of his wide, frog-like mouth as his hand stroked the pole of pitchfork he leant against. Eutopia sat huddled on a low wooden stool positioned just on the peripheral of the firelight. The flames flickered soft shadows over her hunched frame as she rested her chin on her drawn up knees, her feet tucked beneath her as she perched like a little elf with her loyalties torn. 'Can't say that would be unwelcome. Sitting in this shithole has given me fleas.' Jinn paused in his metal wrenching just long enough to scratch exaggeratedly at his arse.
'Think you're so big, ruler of the earth, huh? We won't be crushed by your kind any more. We're going to pick you off one by one. Starting with you.' Scott grinned, flashing his brown teeth as he lowered his pitchfork and advanced a few steps towards Jinn. Irritated by the thick, nasal quality of the boy's voice, Jinn flexed as though making a grab for his ankle which sent Scott reeling back a step as quickly as if he'd just been bitten by something nasty.
'I'm going to pluck you like a chicken, fucker,' spat Scott as he caught what he thought was a giggle from Eutopia when he stumbled backwards. However, when he turned to glower at her, he found her frowning gently at whatever Horace was insisting upon in hushed tones to the group gathered around him. 'Jed,' Scott called, 'got any of them iron stakes? We need to do this now.'
'Sure, in the smithy's. I'll have to get them.' Jed straightened up, cracking his knuckles as his dark brows knitted together. 'What do you want them for?'
'You ever pluck the wings off a fly or the feathers from a chicken?' Scott asked with a sickening smile on his too-wet lips.
'Not a live one, no.'
'They don't keep still. Think this huge fucker will stay still if we're hacking his wings off? We need to nail him down.'
Jed looked to Horace as though waiting for his confirmation on the order as the old man stood too, a weary acceptance etched on his face as he gave a nod so small it was practically a twitch. Eutopia raised her head and followed Jed with her eyes as he stalked from the room without a glance at her and paused only at the door to scoop up a basket of split logs to carry with him.
'Do angels bleed?' the Thatcher boy asked eagerly, voicing her own sudden thought, though with a little more excitement that Eutopia felt.
'We're about to find out,' grinned Scott as he licked his lips and leant against his pitchfork again.
'Maybe we should do this outside?' Phoibe suggested, wringing her hands as she thought about the mess she would have to clean up. People began to move, a few of the men checked the edges on their blades for sharpness and Marcus the thatcher hefted his reclaimed baseball bat, swinging it carelessly with one eye squinted at Jinn as though he was taking aim. A few of the women looked uncertain, though Tally grinned manically as she helped herself to Phoibe's best paring knife. Eutopia noticed her usually pale cheeks were flushed and her brown eyes were too bright.
'It would certainly send a message if we did it outside,' someone agreed.
'It would attract unwanted attention,' Horace snapped, leaning heavily on a short staff of knotted ash, which wasn't the usual one he used when he got tired. That had shattered beyond repair on Jinn's arm not so long before. 'We are only fifteen or so, we are not strong enough to pick this fight yet. We do this in secret now but will pass the feathers on around the Wolds so that others will know our intention. Our army will grow.'
'What of the book you promised?' a dark blonde lady asked, turning her pale, watery eyes onto Horace and away from the toasting fork she'd been inspecting.
'Ella,' Eutopia remembered she was the baker's wife, her once delicate beauty ravaged by woe until she had become the hard-faced pinched looking woman she was now. 'We tried. Take heart in the fact we haven't given up, we've just had to deviate from our initial path. We didn't plan on this happening.'
Jinn had been watching and listening to the conversation going on around him, but his interest peaked at the mention of a book. He had a penchant for books, as Eutopia had already discovered, but these people shouldn't know what one was – they had been banned for so long.
'Will you send her after it again?' Ella asked. Horace stiffened.
'We must first do what needs to be done. We will discuss this when this – matter – has been taken care of.' The blonde woman pressed her already thin lips into an even thinner line, her pale, washed out eyes flickered to Eutopia, who had been watching the stony-still form of Jinn beneath his net.
'Horace, we can't do this, you can't let this happen. It makes us just like them,' Eutopia said softly, her lower lip raw and near bleeding from where she had chewed it with concern. The old man turned his blind eyes upon her, hearing the sorrow in her voice.
'No, it makes us even.' It was Jed that replied as he briskly swept back into the cottage, slamming the door shut with a kick behind him as he pulled a handful of long, thick iron stakes from beneath the logs in the basket he carried. The stakes were roughly hewn, four sided that tapered from a top measuring three inches across to a wickedly sharp point that Jed fingered with a cold smile. 'A life for a life, isn't that right?'
'A tooth for a tooth,' Jinn agreed amicably as he began to slowly force his shoulders up, feeling the wire-thin metal beginning to weaken and give where it had been repaired so many times. Scott looked alert suddenly, taking his pitchfork up in both hands and crouching low.
'We need to do this now,' he warned. There was a soft snickering sound, like the twang of a silk thread when stretched too tight, and Eutopia saw more of Jinn's beautifully unsullied feathers ruffle up, free from the constraints of the wire mesh.
'This isn't such a good idea. I'd hate for anyone to get hurt,' Jinn reasoned lowly as he raised himself up onto one knee. Jed flung himself on top of a feathered wing as the angel began to shake them out like a bird preening, cleaning off the dust.
'Don't just stand there!' Jed yelled at Scott, who stood blinking stupidly, the pitchfork slipping to the floor in his surprise. Marcus cried out some warbling war cry as he launched himself onto Jinn's back, grabbing a handful of his thick, dark hair with one hand and swinging his beloved bat, without any real aim, with the other – delivering a crushing blow between Jinn's shoulder blades.
'Pin him down!' roared Jed as he flung an iron stake at the nearest figure, who just happened to be Tally. A thick set, shaggy man named Alfred snatched the huge pin before the bewildered girl could even blink. He clutched it tight between his gappy teeth as he flung himself down and seized a thick handful of sleek feathers as deftly as he would have grasped the reins on a plough-horse and drove the sharp spike of iron right through the meatiest part he could find, hammering it to the floor with the chunky hammer he'd loosed from his belt.
'No!' Eutopia burst out, rushing forwards as Jinn batted the hulking figure of Alfred away. Jed had managed to pound another thick nail into the wing-tip he had half fallen with and half wrestled to the ground, as Marcus took better aim and swung his baseball back towards the back of Jinn's skull as he clung to his muscled back by his knees, just as Jinn twitched his head to the left and avoided the blow. Tally joined the fray, throwing herself towards the flailing wings as Jinn ripped himself free and rose up more, arching his back as the now ragged tip of one wing swept the bare floor.
'You'll stop there,' growled Scott. Jinn caught the edge in his voice and looked up, the snarl of indignation frozen on his beautiful face. The boy had a handful of Eutopia's hair wrapped around his dirty fingers and the lethally sharp points of his pitchfork pressed tight against her exposed throat. 'You'll keep still now or I'll kill her.'
'You'll do no such thing you foolish child!' Phoibe blazed, careening towards Scott with a meaty fist clenched.
'Wait,' Horace ordered, catching hold of his wife's sleeve as she passed. 'The boy might not be all that foolish.' Although Horace couldn't see, he could sense the crackle of tension lesson and he imagined the way Jinn's shoulders would sag slightly. Scott was a blundering, unfeeling lout at times, but Horace had to admit that he was on to something here. Scott pressed his advantage, jabbing the pitchfork further against Eutopia's neck so that one prong sank against her soft flesh and released a thin trickle of blood. Eutopia cursed him, twisting her head away as best she could to relieve the pressure. Phoibe cried out into the silence and Horace tightened his grasp on his wife.
'He really does love her,' he whispered deadly soft, as he sensed Jinn's wings spread slowly. He could almost hear the way the delicate downy feathers dropped a little from his shoulder blades, exposing the sloped, thick sinewy link where human-like flesh melded into feathered wing.
'Let her go,' Jinn said, his voice level but every word dripping with a dangerous intention. Scott laughed.
'You're not in the position to command now, Commander,' he sneered, his brown teeth bared at Eutopia as he grinned. 'Got your weakness. Jed, Alfred, cut 'em off, he won't give us no trouble now. It'll be as easy as pulling wings off a fly, but a deal more satisfying I'd wager.'
Jed stood, panting with the exertion of trying to nail down one of Jinn's wings, as Alfred retrieved his mallet from the floor and took a cleaver from Ella. Both men advanced upon the angel with a little more caution as Jinn slowly raised his hands to lace them behind his head. His eyes were scarlet with fury, fixed on the dribble of blood that trickled from Eutopia's neck. He didn't flinch when the men each gripped a handful of his feathers and stretched his wings out further to expose that soft, fluffy join a little more. The firelight glinted wickedly off of the blade of Alfred's cleaver as he swung it.
The hard thunk it made as the metal embedded itself deep into the thick wood of Scott's pitchfork handle was almost sickening. Only Jinn's eyes had been fast enough to catch Eutopia's catlike reaction as she slipped from Scott's slackened grip and yanked the wooden handle from his hand before she had flung herself across the room to deflect the hammer and blade from his wings. Alfred, fuelled by adrenaline and disappointed by the lack of blood shoved Eutopia hard enough to send her reeling. Jinn caught her deftly, sweeping her out of harm's way with one arm and brushing the swooshing arc of metal away as Alfred rushed at her.
'She is the key!' Jinn roared. 'She is the key and I have the book you need.'
'Shit,' Jed muttered, his blacksmith's hammer falling from his hand with a clunk. Horace nodded, sagely.
'He's on our side, leave him be.'