My Precious Nightmare

Chapter 42: Fragile

Despite the durability of his body, Husani's wings were fragile. It only made sense with their ability to retract back into his flesh. Anything sturdy took time to make, even with the enhanced metabolism of his body. It had taken him nearly three hundred years to build, not only his back muscles, but his wings' endurance to what they had now, which had taken him across the city and back.

He had gone beyond that max when he'd landed atop the hospital.

Now choking with pain, he no longer had the clarity of mind to keep hold of the shadows hiding him. Not only was it taking all it had in him to fight against the pain of keeping airborne, but his thirst had come in with a vengeance. He no longer had wings. Just great tents of fire larger than him.

He had no choice. He had to return to the earth and take the rest of the way on foot.

I have to get back to Morianton...

The boy didn't know what he had helped bring forth in Sky. And the ancient vampire, if they didn't figure out how to get that heart out soon, and then get rid of it just—

A lightning snap of pain.

Husani fell.

The air slapped at him, catching to what remained of his flimsy wings and sent him spinning. He scrambled for his bearings, clawing at his back, but it was too late. The limb his fingers pinched had the consistency of Playdoh. His back muscles spasmed and sucked back in the flesh against the wild air forces. A scream of agony tore from his mouth.

He just had to catch the edge of one wing—hold out what was left of the membrane like a parachute—

An edge of a building caught his leg, flipping him back even faster. He squeezed his eyes shut. Over the scream of air was the loud honk of a horn.

Black.

And in that blackness, where his thoughts were nothing, his thirst flared up in a scorching, all-encompassing fire, and a heady, persistent throb. His heartbeat.

His consciousness trickled in, like water being poured into a trough. Usually when he woke up from the monster's possession it was a snap. But then, he had only been this damaged one time before, when his heart had been torn from his chest.

Like then, smell came first. Not delicate and finely tuned, but in a base, cursory sense. And what came to him was blood; savory as meat to a starving man, mouth-watering as baking desserts, enticing as crystal water in the desert.

Then colors and lights. Blinding lights. Splotches of clear images, like a streetlight, broken glass on the sidewalk, steam from the crunched hood of the car.

Screaming. People screaming, like pigs to the slaughter.

Oh dear God...

And, finally, his sense of touch.

It was perhaps, again, the instinct's way of survival to give him this sense last, for with it came his awareness of where his body was.

Long, satin cool hair tangled in his fingers. Denim against his bare chest. Warmth, softness, a comfortable weight. He caught a whiff of that plastic smell of fragrance that infiltrated every cosmetic product these days. The woman's blood ran through his body, stitching up pains and clearing his mind even as he drank.

Only when his mouth filled with nothing but bruised, mashed flesh instead of blood did his monster finally hand back the reins. He dropped her, his frame trembling so hard he fell to his knees.

Scattered across the downtown street with bits of glass and car were at least a dozen bodies. Men. Women. Both young and old. Still no children, but that was hardly a relief to his sanity.

Husani shoved himself up, paying no mind to the glass that bit into his hands.

Oh God...Oh God...what have I...

Two cars had wrecked, one face-first into a street light next to him with the passenger door hanging open. Likely, he had pulled the blond woman he had just dropped from there. The other vehicle had been turned onto its side, leaving smears of red paint where it had skidded across the asphalt. Hundreds of screaming people still fled the scenes. A block down he could see a set of police officers fighting to get through.

His brain told him to run, but his body wouldn't move. Somehow, this was worse than the aftermath of his attempted suicide. The too-bright city lights gave the scene a painful, otherworldly glow.

He stumbled back to the building for support.

"This...this isn't real..."

Four more police officers appeared from seemingly nowhere. Husani watched them run at him in a daze. The reality only hit him when they did. A live stun gun hit his throat, but even though his muscles went obediently rigid, he hardly felt it. Soon it seemed that the whole human race was trying to dogpile him and he couldn't breathe, yet he floated, somehow disconnected from it all, watching as though it were happening to someone else.

He knew this numbness. He welcomed it.

They flipped him and cuffed his entire lower arms and wrists with a metal locker of sorts, cuffed his lower legs in the same manner, and muzzled him. He grimly agreed with their actions. The more restraints on him the better.

At length, they threw him into the back of an armored truck which was—and here was Husani's first mercy—blessedly dark.

Drifting. Driving. Somewhere far.

Pulled out. Voices. Bright lights. He closed his eyes against it all. What if they killed him? Wouldn't he be lucky then? Hopefully they did it right the first time.

Somewhere, in the numbness which he drifted, he found himself wandering back to his errands. Lea walked beside him in a white hijab, her eyes like jewels in the sunlight, even viewed through his heavily tinted sunglasses. It reminded him of an extinct time when even the bare shoulder of a woman, or the silken lock of her hair, would elicit a dream-like desire within him. Back when he walked the burning sands of the desert without fear of the sun. Back when his father still pointed to a particularly strong herb he'd been cultivating in the kitchen window for months. Back when his mother gave a shrill cry of triumph when she caught a newborn babe, healthy and strong.

He could almost smell the myrrh of his mother's favorite sari. Feel the strength of a tiny newborn hand. Feel the dry crisp of the well's stones after a day tending their small farm.

He closed his eyes and stayed.

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Author's note: Am I the only one who heard Fracisco from Cars 2 yelling "FRAG-I-LEH! He calla Fracisco FRAG-I-LEH!" On reading the chapter title? I know, I wrote it, but I was trying to get in touch with my inner angst when I wrote it, not my three-year-old's movie reel.