It's a starless sky the night we leave for the lonely house. Low clouds hang ominously, as if tired with the effort of staying up. It's the weakest hours of morning and we are ready. Scout moves lithely across the land, and I follow, some distance away. It takes longer than I remember to arrive at the small building. Scout gestures at me as he gets closer, telling me to come around from another direction and I comply. The night is quiet but we cannot judge who may come into the area. There is no evidence of Thunderbirds nearby but we have been warned to be careful.
I'm glad I am doing this with Scout, for his skills are a great attribute to my own. Born a handful of months after me, Scout is slender and strong, a quick thinker and a sharp judge of character.
Leaving me to a halt, Scout loops around the house twice, his figure near invisible, so subtle are his movements. I watch from the same place I stood when the girl saw me, staying low. It's an uncertain area, in the middle of flatlands. A spy could be easily spotted. When Scout has finished scouring the surroundings for anything of danger, he nods me forward to join him at the back door. Though we've done this a thousand times, mild break-ins for information, I feel a strange anticipation rising up in my stomach. I grin with excitement and Scout notices.
"Pull yourself together," he jokes with mock seriousness.
But Scout's eyes are shining with exhilaration too. He rarely gets to do night-spying. He's such a valuable asset as a watch guard that he commonly misses these opportunities. He grins as he unlocks the first padlock before working on the second, and then third. When the last has been unlocked, he grabs my arm and shakes it enthusiastically. I want to laugh with glee. We have fun on our missions. We're safe, just here to take watch on a couple of humans. But being out in the night air is freeing. And to our kind, freedom is the most satisfying craving there is. I clench my teeth together, eyes lit up at my friend. He pushes the door open.
Entering into a small laundry, we walk through to a kitchen. It smells strange and very human, of stark cleaning products and laundered tablecloths. I can feel no sense of other supernatural activity, which is bemusing. The Alpha is rarely wrong, and if Thunderbirds really are hunting the area, they wouldn't be doing it nonsensically. I indicate upstairs and Scout points towards the front room. I nod, and he passes me into the shadowed room to the left. Silent as he, I climb the wooden steps until I find myself in a room cleansed by moonlight. Her room. The girl.
YOU ARE READING
When Wings Burn
Paranormal"Do you have a name?" "Harper. Just Harper." In a dangerously utilitarian world, Harper longs to experience the illegal. Whispers and hints of supernatural activity are everywhere, and yet one show of interest will mean immediate death. With no stor...
