Page 13 of Wings of Lies
“Well, now that I know I won’t have to hold your hair while you puke chunks of your food up, why don’t you answer my question, and I’ll answer yours?”
Gross.
“I escaped from my cage and ran. Other than that, I have no answers.”
He set his fork in his salad bowl and pushed it aside. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, they caged me in a cement closet and starved me, which was why I woke up looking like a twelve-year-old girl. I had IVs coming out of my limbs, flaming hands melting doorknobs and glass, and voices speaking to me about strange powers and places to go.” Myvoice continued to rise as I explained the past horrible hours of my existence. I left out the part about his name and my mom, not yet ready to dive into that conversation.
Oliver blinked. “I’m sorry. Can we unpack that a bit? They had you caged in a cement closet? Where? Who is they? How’d you get out? For how long?”
“Like I said, I don’t know.” Touching the tender area near my elbow, I felt not only the small lump from the IV but my bones, too. If I had any muscles, they were gone now. “Long enough to make my nineteen-year-old body look like it’s twelve, I guess.”
He gaped at me. “You’re nineteen?”
Did I really look that young to him?I haven’t been in the presence of a mirror yet, but it couldn’t be that bad.
The conversation stopped as Max walked over, dropped off the check, and scurried away.
“I think so, but it depends on how long I was there.”
All I had to go on were a few memories. The most important one left me with a twisting ache in my stomach. Like a masochist, I replayed it, remembering her demanding tone, the need to fight, and the dread begging me to run into her arms.Butwho were they?Every time I tried to picture the figures surrounding my mom, their uniforms flickered between white and blood-red, between brilliant metal and leather.
“When’s your birthday or creation day?” Oliver asked.
Creation day…?Was he trying to be inclusive in some weird way?
“I don’t know.”
“When did they capture you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know who captured you?” The tone of his voice lifted.
A blurry form of black and red popped into my mind. “No. But I’m assuming it was the same people chasing us.”
Oliver drummed his fingers against his lip, unsurprised. He knew something.
I leaned forward. “Who are they? Do you know the guy who wears a cream cowboy hat?”
His nostrils flared as he nodded.
How did he know them? And why did he find me at the perfect time?
A niggling suspicion lingered. “Are you working for them?”
His hand shot out, gripping my wrist against the table. Shocked, I jerked back, squirming in his hold. But my nonexistent muscles against his lanky strength were no match. About to scream for help, he yanked me forward.
“If I were one of them, you’d already be back in that closet. This”—he pulled down the V of his shirt, exposing his chest. An angry, discolored scar puckered and indented the once flat expanse—“This is what happens when you have a run-in withthem,” he spat, then released my wrist and crossed his arms.
“How?” I asked, horrified. The collar of his shirt covered most of the scar, but I could still see three puffy pink rectangles peeking out.
“Fire.”
They burned his chest in the shape of a handprint?“Why?”
“As much as I’d love to relive those moments and bask in their beautiful misery, now’s not the time.” He gave a fake smile.
