Black Wings Read online

  And then she was awake.

  Muzzy-headed, her mouth a trash can. No, a slaughterhouse, she thought. In her mouth, she tasted thick, greasy slabs of meat and cheese, the sort of meal she’d been unable to eat for months.

  She wasn’t screaming, but someone was. “Briella?”

  Was the girl watching something on TV that she wasn’t supposed to? The screams sounded breathless, whistling and far away. Shit, was she boiling water? That was a kettle, not a person. What was going on?

  Marian couldn’t think straight. The blankets had tangled around her feet. She was trapped. The screaming faded. She’d been dreaming, right? She fought to get herself upright. Failed. Fell back against the pillows.

  The doorbell rang. Then again. The bell itself had been sounding like a dying cat for the past year or so; Dean had changed the battery and the wiring, but nothing had helped. Now it wailed, urgent and demanding, and Marian couldn’t get herself out of bed to reach it.

  She made it out of bed. Lumbered, confused and disoriented, toward the source of the noise. She hit the bedroom doorframe with her shoulder, hard enough to send her spinning back into the room before she gathered herself sufficiently to move forward again. She wanted to shout out to the person ringing the bell so incessantly that she was on her way, but she was too out of breath. By the time she got to the front door, the bell had stopped.

  She opened it, expecting a delivery person, maybe a door-to-door evangelist, someone she could pointedly dismiss. Instead, it was her neighbor, Hank, and in his arms was a shivering and whining Briella. Marian blinked rapidly, not sure what to do or say. Her stomach lurched and her gorge rose. Her head pounded.

  “She ought to have stayed in her own yard,” Hank said. “Rufus didn’t mean anything by it. But she ought to have stayed in her own yard. I’ve told you all that, over and over again. All you kids, you never listen.”

  Marian grabbed her daughter from the man’s arms, mindful of the weight and how it made her back ache. “What happened?”

  Briella squirmed to get her feet on the ground. She held up her hand. She’d grown a lot over the past few months, sprouting up at least two inches, but in this moment her hand seemed as tiny as a doll’s.

  It was covered in blood that oozed out between her clenched fingers. Marian gasped and grabbed at the girl’s hand. Briella cried out – in pain or fear, Marian didn’t know and didn’t care. She pulled the girl inside the house and behind her, putting out a hand to keep Hank from coming any closer, even though he hadn’t made so much as a move to do so.

  “I just wanted to play with the dog.” Briella’s hitching breaths made it hard to understand the words, and Hank cut her off almost instantly with a shaking, breathless retort.

  “She was trying to take him. She had him by the collar, and she was dragging him over the electric fence. That hurts him, you know. Rufus knows he’s not to go beyond it. It shocks him if he does. She had him—” Hank broke off and took a few steps back, off the porch. His hands were trembling. “By the collar. He was yelping and trying to get away. He must’ve bit her then.”

  “Briella, is this true?” Marian put her hands on the girl’s shoulders, her grip tight. She was up and fully out of bed for the first time in months. She could only guess that the adrenaline was keeping her upright. “What were you doing?”

  “I just wanted to play,” Briella said stubbornly. “My hand hurts!”

  “C’mon. Let’s go.” Marian straightened. “I’m sorry, Hank. Your dog bit my kid though, so I’m not sure what to do about that.”

  “She ought to have stayed in her own yard,” he repeated.

  Marian closed the door on him and took Briella into the bathroom, where she washed the wound carefully, taking her time. Breathing in through her nose, out through her mouth. She had to stop once, thinking she would vomit, but she managed not to. There was a lot of blood, but the injury itself turned out to be two small punctures on the back of Briella’s hand and palm, as though the dog had nipped, for just a moment.

  Stretching to pull a package of adhesive bandages from the medicine cabinet, Marian caught sight of her own face. The scars had faded, but she could still find them if she wanted to. A series of ragged holes along her chin and into her cheek. She’d needed fifty-seven stitches. She remembered hearing her mother once say that if Marian hadn’t hit the dog as hard as she had, it would have torn off her jaw. She didn’t know if that was true, but the memory of the pain flashed back to her hard enough that she had to grip the sink to keep from falling over.

  Compared to what had happened to Marian, Briella’s injury looked like almost nothing.

  The girl had stopped crying, anyway. She’d watched her mother cleaning the wound carefully, with an avid fascination. She held still while Marian pressed the bandage over the small punctures. They weren’t even bleeding anymore.

  “Can you curl your fingers for me?” Marian asked.

  Briella did, holding up her hand. “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t look too bad.” Marian settled herself on the edge of the tub, thinking for a moment that she might lose her balance and flip over backward. She caught herself on the edge and let her head droop, eyes closed. The rush of fear had faded, leaving her shaking internally and ready to collapse. She’d be lucky if she made it back to bed.

  Briella, seated on the closed toilet lid, turned to her. “It hurts.”

  “Want to tell me what happened?” Marian closed her eyes again. Buying time. If she could sit here long enough, she might be able to make it without passing out or throwing up. She’d consider it a win if she managed only one.

  “I was just playing with the dog. I wanted him to meet Onyx. I thought maybe they could be friends and have a playdate or something.” Briella had slid into that plastic tone of a much younger child, that bright and empty voice. She could be telling the truth or straight-up lying to her mother’s face. Marian had stopped being able to tell.

  “You know you’re not supposed to go out into Mr. Hank’s yard.” Marian cracked open an eye.

  Briella nodded. “I know.”

  “He said you were trying to take the dog.”

  “I knew I wasn’t supposed to go into his yard, so I thought if the dog could come play in ours, that would be better. But I didn’t know he had a bad collar on,” Briella said in the babyish voice, too young for her age.

  It set Marian’s teeth on edge. She could no longer bear to sit on the edge of the tub with her ass aching. She heaved herself to her feet, one hand on the enormous mound of her belly, the other on the edge of the sink to keep herself steady. She desperately had to pee.

  “Don’t talk like that,” she said.

  Briella gave her an innocent look. “Like what?”

  “Like a baby,” Marian snapped.

  Briella’s smile vanished. Her eyes narrowed. In the months of Marian’s sickness, and even for a while before that, the girl had been pleasant and obedient and helpful, but here was the flash of anger and defiance Marian had been expecting.

  “You’re not a baby,” Marian said, trying to soften her tone.

  Briella’s lip curled. “If I was a baby, would you like me better? You would, wouldn’t you? If I was the one making you sick, you’d be angry and hate me, unless I was a damn baby!”

  “Move,” Marian managed to croak out, gesturing at the toilet. “I’m going to—”

  She couldn’t finish before she was gagging, bile flooding her mouth. Briella flew off the toilet and out of the bathroom, leaving Marian to flip up the seat and lean over to unleash the hot liquid that scalded her throat. She heaved a couple times, bringing up little more than air. Yet, when she stood to rinse her mouth at the sink, despite her sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes, she felt…better.

  Better than she had for a while, anyway. She brushed her teeth, expecting that simple task to start off another round of vomiting,