Wingless

9. The Lesson

Charlie

Tane stood, cocking her head to the side. I stood, too.     “What is it?” I asked, touching her shoulder.

She was far away from me for some reason; she didn’t respond to my touch at all. She took three steps toward the fence. Her eyebrows furrowed together and her ears twitched. I held my breath and, simply put, got scared.

Was it another Feeder? I couldn't take it again. I mean, last time, Tane had, admittedly, done most of the work, but those things were still freaky. I hated them. And now she had brought another one? How did they even get to Earth?

Tane turned fully to the fence gate, and I was glad that it was seven feet tall. I was also happy to see that it was locked.

Not that either of those things ended up protecting us. A thing flipped over the top of the wooden planks and landed in a menacing crouch. I stumbled backwards and fell on my back with a startled grunt. I felt the dull heat of the barely-burning Feeder.

The thing stood and I saw that it was not a thing at all. Just apparently, a very agile, very tall, very shirtless guy. Tane's eyes got wide and her smile was blinding.

“Gaius,” she whispered, and my world shattered.

She seemed to glide to him, and vice versa. They met somewhere in the offset middle and she laid her hands on either side of his head. Their foreheads touched and their eyes closed.

His hands gripped her forearms tenderly. He breathed a word I couldn't hear from my distance and they stayed like that for what felt like hours. It couldn't have been too long, though, because the Feeder was still burning, however weakly.

It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. He got the girl that fast? Just when I was about to...well, I was going to do something. Like what, the snake-like voice in the back of my head taunted, give her flowers and tell her she's pretty? What do angels want, anyway?

Obviously, other angels.

“You will kindly refer to us by our station,” the guy said. “We are not angels. We are Listeners.”

A little alarmed that he could hear my thoughts, I stood up again. Tane had already told me but it's not like I had aimed my thoughts at him. I curled my hands into fists, even though I had no intention of punching him. I didn't like the way he looked. Had he just walked out of a freaking Gillette commercial?

Every line on the guy was angled and sturdy. His hair shined and was groomed perfectly where mine was kind of curly and hadn't been cut in weeks. His arms were huge like he wrestled tigers in his spare time. If Felix were around, even he would have felt inadequate. All tall and strong-looking and basically everything I wasn't. I was barely five-eight. I was taller than Tane, sure, but not by much.

So what I'd gathered about Fismuth was that everyone was gorgeous and mostly naked. Though, to be fair, he was at least wearing pants. Really expensive looking pants that cut off at his calves. He had that crimson sash, too. It was wrapped and knotted intricately around his right wrist with more knots than sash showing.

“Are you all right?” he asked her in a sickeningly delicate tone. Tane smiled and bit her lip, nodding. Amazing. Just as I'd gotten in the race, another guy had come in and won, three times over. “I was so worried.” They were barely seven centimeters away from making out. It wouldn't have been so bad if Tane hadn't looked so relieved. Like being with me was just a punishment she had to endure before she could go back to heaven. Or back to this guy. “Your hand. It's hurt.” I was going to clean it for her. “Let me heal it.”