Page 86 of Glass Wings
Her inner voice yelled so loud that she nearly jumped. It sounded outside of her, before her, and Hadley opened her eyes. She had been in this place before, surrounded by the hooded figures of Sheng’s followers.
The upstairs family room was different this time as she pushed herself off the floor. Her wings had enveloped her, keeping her body warm and covered. With disdain, she noted that she stood in the center of the circle. She also noticed something large propped against the wall. The item was covered in a black cloth but towered at twelve or thirteen feet in height.
“Fight the flame. Kill the light,” Sheng’s voice called out behind her. Hadley jumped and turned to face him. His eyes and face were turned up to the ceiling with his arms open wide, as if expecting to receive something from the heavens.
“Now that I am wed to the purest biologically created power in existence, a power that I have awaited for hundreds of thousands of years, we will produce an army of heirs. Together, my bride and I will create something worthy of defending us from the one true threat to this world to our home. For the first time, enemies will unite and conquer.”
The hooded cloaks around him chanted louder in response, filling the room with a melodic rhythm that sent chills down Hadley’s spine.
“Are you ready for your reveal, my bride?” Sheng whispered sensually into her ear from behind her.
“My what?” she responded as Sheng gave a signal, and twocloaked figures pulled down the black curtain, revealing a large, spectacular mirror surrounded by thick gold trim. Hadley was so intrigued by its pattern that she failed to see her reflection until Sheng grabbed her shoulders and focused her attention.
There, standing opposite the mirror, was her reflection, except it wasn’t her at all. A woman, not a lost girl, was staring back at her with a face full and glowing. Hadley touched her cheek, ensuring it was her in the reflection; the healthiest, strongest version of herself reflected every motion.
She turned to the side slightly, forgetting momentarily of the weight on her back pulling her downwards. Hadley couldn’t quite see them and, for the first time, attempted to move them. Muscles not existing in her body even yesterday followed her mental commands. A soreness broke out across her back as if she were lifting heavy weights that she was not trained for.
Wake up.
Her inner voice shouted again, making Hadley relax her wings as she gasped, now knowing that the voice was outside of her. That’s when she saw it: a shadow of a dainty hand coming through the mirror, grabbing the exterior gold rim. The hand emerged, turning into an arm, a shoulder, and then a neck attached to a face, her face.
Hadley stared, stunned, as a dark, shadow version of herself roamed free in the reflection before her.
“Staring at your beauty?” Sheng’s voice was hushed.
She cocked her head at the shadow, at her inner voice, as it walked out of the mirror and held a finger to her mouth.
“Shhh,” the inner voice said and gave her a wink before falling into an impossibly quick pirouette and disappearing into the air.
Did anyone else see that?
“Try again, Hadley, spread your wings again,” Sheng encouraged. Hadley snapped out of her disbelief. She must be seeing things from the loss of blood. There must be a logical explanation.
Focusing back on herself in the mirror, Hadley used her new muscles again, flexing, pushing, and expanding until her wings werestretched out, taking up ten or eleven feet and pushing the circle further from her.
There were murmurs and audible gasps of excitement from the cloaked individuals around her. One pulled down his hood to look at her better. Saul. He had a tear sliding down his cheek, and once he realized that she noticed him, he fell into a posture of worship. The others followed.
“Kinnari typically have wings that match their eyes,” Sheng said to her, his voice filled with pride.
“That’s not the case with me. Why?” she asked.
Looking into the mirror, Hadley saw only a reflection, a bounce of light with streaks of silver and blue glittering with her movement.
“It’s almost as if they’re . . .” she said to herself in disbelief. “Made of glass.”
25
Amis | Sacramento, CA | Early 2000s
It had seemedlike an eternity since Sheng first fed on him. Amis was often left in a weakened euphoria, wings out while his blood traveled down the punctures where Sheng’s teeth had sunk in. As far as Vrae went, Amis felt lucky and grateful at times that the eldest and leader of them was so refined. He was no monster, not in the true sense of the word. Amis often had the suspicion that he himself better fit that description.
Sheng did have the impossible job of keeping the younger, more bloodthirsty Vrae in control, and those assholes were certainly not pleasant to be around. He would often find himself waking up hanging upside down over the pentagram in the ceiling, inches away from the portal energy that transported a being into Myrilosis, the same as the one in the Waihema forest. His blood would drip from open wounds into cups, sometimes even into their smiling mouths.They thought they owned him if Sheng wasn’t around, as if he hadn’t committed his life to finding peace between their species.
Amis pushed through the half-open door to Sheng’s office on the second floor, ready to bid him farewell before he took off for his journey back to Waihema. A green indoor houseplant with gigantic leaves stood in the corner in a pale pink ceramic pot, surprisingly the only decor in the space. The walls were lined with shelves of manilla envelopes and hard drives in a manic, nonsensical order.
“I don’t understand how you can actually get any work done in all this chaos,” Amis chuckled. Sheng stiffened, acknowledging his presence without looking up from his computer.
Amis had been away from Waihema for too long—the village was overdue for a cull. The Vrae had gotten restless with Hadley’s presence, the Kinnariblood running through her veins was off limits to them—a concept they were unfamiliar with. They didn’t much like that. Amis was being fed on twice as much as usual because of tension. It was time to prepare the village for an attack to satiate the bloodlust. Thank gods they didn’t all live in the same building together, though Amis supposed that they were all there so much that it likely wouldn’t have changed the dynamic if they did.
