30. Awoken
Awoken
Driz stared into a blinding inferno trying to devour the sky.
The sun. It was so bright.
How was she seeing the sun?
She turned her heavy head, disoriented by the painfully vibrant world around her. A waterfall of sensation and something hot and raging rushed through her ears and limbs, shaking her.
Pearl was in danger. Driz had heard her.
Her strange body moved, sluggish and uncoordinated, as she lumbered to the edge of the cliff and dove off it. Each beat of her wings was wrong. Slow. Heavy.
Necessary.
Driz didn’t know how, or why. All that mattered was getting to Pearl.
Instinct drove Driz, following the direction of the scream that had awoken her. She would destroy anything that tried to stop her.
The land and sky blurred. Too bright. Burning her, like the fire in a mine. Driving her wings faster. Harder.
A shack appeared in the clearing of a brushy valley. Humans surrounded it, fighting one another. Driz inhaled, scenting them over fresh gunpowder and blight. A dozen at least. None of them mattered.
Their cries did not impact her. A bullet collided with her arm as she landed outside the house. She knocked the nearest human to the earth and roared in fury. Not at the pesky, inconsequential bullet. At everything in her way.
Several more things crashed into this body that was not her own.
She batted them away, not caring as they fell beneath the stride of her unfeeling feet.
Swiping at a man who was closest to her, she crumpled the barrel of the weapon and tossed it, along with the human, aside.
Another rushed her and she tore through him with a single swipe, crushing what was left as she charged forward.
Inside, Pearl cried out again.
Driz lowered her head and barreled through the door, taking a chunk of the surrounding wall and a bit of the roof with her.
Pearl turned. Driz ignored everything else, reaching and folding Pearl into her arms, curling her wings until they were completely enclosed. She would keep Pearl safe in her fortress of stone.
Pearl struggled. The rope that bound her hands snapped easily. Someone had tied her up. Someone had touched her. Someone had made her scream.
They would all die. All of them.
Fury unlike anything Driz had known was fracturing her from the inside out.
In the sanctuary of her wings, all was dark and calm. But within Driz, the rage would not subside. She growled and shook with the need to destroy. To obliterate everything that threatened what was hers.
“Driz,” Pearl said again.
Driz was here. And she was stone. Pearl would panic about that later. Right now, she needed Driz to let her go.
Pearl reached up, cupping the familiar, yet unfamiliar, face in the darkness of the stone prison of wings. She repeated her name, uncertain if Driz could hear her.
Beneath her hands, Driz vibrated, a menacing growl emanating from her.
“Let me go,” Pearl begged, tears sliding down her face. “My mother…”
The growling grew louder and the pressure around her increased. Constricting her. “You’re hurting me,” Pearl gasped, though it wasn’t quite true.
The shaking grip eased, and Pearl managed to breathe. Driz had heard her.
Beyond the imprisoning veil of stone wings, the muffled sound of voices and calls of panic spiked the fear clawing inside Pearl’s chest. More gunfire. Several shots reverberated around the interior of their private winged hollow.
They were shooting at Driz.
Her mother was bleeding out.
“Please.” Pearl pressed her hands against Driz’s chest, but she didn’t give even an inch. “Let me go.”
“No.” The single word was spoken slowly, as if with great effort. It rumbled around and through her. Terrifying, and also giving Pearl hope.
Pearl gripped the back of Driz’s head, her hair stiff and sculptural instead of soft strands. All of her was so hard, and yet moved as stone should not. Pearl pulled herself up and pressed her lips over Driz’s cold ones.
Driz didn’t react outwardly, but the growling quieted.
“Please,” Pearl whispered between soft, coaxing kisses. “Please, Driz. Come back to me.”
After an agonizingly long time, Driz’s lips twitched, responding, even if slightly, to Pearl’s.
“Yes,” Pearl breathed. “That’s right.”
Driz’s growl began again, but with a different timbre as her stone mouth opened more, parting Pearl’s lips. Her hands curled, pressing Pearl closer again.
“Don’t crush me,” Pearl gasped, dismayed that a quiver of fear shook her voice. She trusted Driz. But she also knew this wasn’t entirely her Driz. Not right now.
“I…keep you…safe,” Driz stated, her slow promise rumbling through Pearl’s chest.
“Yes, I want that,” Pearl assured her. “But I need to keep someone safe too. And she’s right there. She’s in danger. I need your help. Help me.”
“How?” Driz asked, her body shaking harder.
“Open your wings. Let me see her.”
After a long, trembling silence, the curtain of darkness slowly cracked open, letting light and the world through. Her wings parted, yet the hold of Driz’s arms remained unyielding.
Pearl twisted around, searching frantically.
The commissioner huddled in the corner with Cecilia. Mayor Brooks and Sheriff Langly lay motionless on the ground. And Steve crouched over a prone Sheriff Oak, pressing his hands to the blood-soaked waistcoat and the wound in her gut. Good thing someone was, because Sheriff Oak wasn’t.
Spitting with fury up at him, she reloaded her revolver, her always-steady hands shaking. “Leave me. Get her out.” Her gaze snapped to Pearl’s and she stilled.
“Ma!” Pearl struggled and reached, trying to get to her. “Don’t stop. Focus, man,” she demanded of Steve, who was staring in horror over her shoulder. She twisted back to Driz, cupping her chiseled cheek. “Help her!”
A bullet from outside the smashed, gaping wall impacted the back of Driz’s wing, chipping off a tiny piece of a joint tip. Driz didn’t even flinch, but Pearl did.
“Whoever the fuck did that better never tell me!” Pearl hollered, and she was met with telling silence.
In the sunlight, Driz was otherworldly, her features even less human. Her emotionless eyes appeared unseeing as they stared into Pearl.
“Help,” Pearl begged.
Moving slowly, as if through water, Driz raised one heavy hand and brushed the dampness on Pearl’s face, her expression still unmoved.
“Take us home. To the doctor.” Pearl had seen enough wounds in her life. They didn’t have much time.
“Keep you safe,” Driz repeated, the words dredged reluctantly from somewhere far away.
“Yes. I’ll be safe there. But I need her to come with us. Now, Driz.”
Driz flared her wings, making everyone around them cower. Driz lifted Pearl off her feet, and Pearl clung back.
“Take us home. Both of us,” Pearl directed firmly, to remind her. Begging Driz would listen. She released one of her arms, reaching down toward her mother.
“No,” Sheriff Oak said, her voice too thin. Too weak. “I won’t lead her to town. Not like this. Leave me.”
Pearl’s tears of fear turned to anger. “Don’t you dare let me watch you die.”
In the end, Sheriff Oak didn’t have much choice to make. A growling Driz brushed Steve aside, sending him stumbling into the wall, and scooped Sheriff Oak up in her arms, pressing her over Pearl’s back. Pearl grabbed her mother’s forearms to help hold her.
Then they were outside, the wind rushing around them as Driz’s impossibly heavy wings carried them into the sky.
A stream of colorful, muttered curses filled Pearl’s ear, and her terrified heart clenched with a dangerous thread of new hope.
Pearl had to squint as the sun pierced the corner of her eye. What a strange sensation, to be flying during the day.
Sheriff Oak huffed as Driz banked and dropped abruptly, landing with a reverberating thud in the street between the saloon and home.
“Spencer!” Pearl called. “Doc!”
As Driz unfurled her arms to release Sheriff Oak into the dirt of the street, Pearl unwound herself and hastily turned. Her back was slick and damp, and not from sweat. She crouched over her mother. But as soon as Pearl started to scoot away, Driz snatched her back, the growl intensifying.
Spencer stuttered to a halt on the dusty porch and stared at the three of them.
“Don’t just stand there,” Pearl spat.
Driz snarled, her wings flaring. Punctuating or responding to the distress, Pearl wasn’t sure.
Pearl pressed back into Driz’s chest, hand coming up to cup her face. To ground her. “Back up. Give them space.” It was like trying to move a boulder. “Give them space,” Pearl repeated, twisting and pounding on Driz’s shoulder until her hand ached.
Driz snarled again, seizing Pearl’s wrist to stop it. “Safe,” Driz rumbled.
Despite herself, a shiver of fresh fear made Pearl still.
Spencer edged closer, eyes darting between Pearl and Driz and Sheriff Oak on the ground, who cursed again and sank her nails into the dusty road. She hauled herself away from the looming tangle of Pearl and goyle until she found Spencer’s hand.
“Your gun,” Sheriff Oak demanded, weakly reaching for his hip.
Spencer took her grasping fingers firmly in his own and then pulled her up and into his arms.
“Bring her in here,” Doc directed, swiping off the nearest table just inside the saloon.
A terrified, whispering crowd hovered out of sight, peering from windows and around the sides of buildings.
As if those could save them. Pearl ignored them, her eyes tracking her mother’s limp body into the saloon.
She scrambled to follow, but Driz kept her locked to her chest, a stone forearm across Pearl’s torso and the other around her hips.
An angular nose nudged Pearl’s cheek, running up and down, collecting and distributing the dampness, smearing it into her bruising skin. The growling grew louder. Her wings flared again.
Even in Pearl’s distress, she realized she needed to keep Driz calm. “I’m safe,” Pearl whispered, forcing herself to believe it. “Thank you, sweetheart. You did so well.”
The growling quieted. Driz’s nose sank into Pearl’s hair, nuzzling her almost aggressively. Pearl might have enjoyed it, at any other time.
“What’s happening in there?” Pearl called through the open doors, where she could see her mother’s boots and a bloody waistcoat on the floor. No one answered her, and Pearl tried not to hyperventilate.
She’d had lots of practice calming herself. Her mother had taught her.
If Pearl gave in to her panic, Driz might too. Pearl had to stay calm.
With every ounce of control she had, she steadied her hands and stilled her mind as she glanced toward the setting sun.