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NOTE; Okay guys, the time has come! I need your opinion. Should I post A Bitter Wind here, or in its own story? I'd seriously thought about putting it under TWow originally, that's why I haven't marked it as complete. I wanted to put Angel and the Fledges up on here too, but I made the mistake of having a friend upload the first chapter for me, and she did it as a different story.... So, again, I could really use your opinions, just leave a comment on this chapter saying if you think I should do it as a different thing, or put it up here. And, just so I'm not abusing the TOS, here's a preview of A Bitter Wind :D (It's different from the previous one... ENJOY!)
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A BITTER WIND
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Iris was staring at the side of Epiphany's head so intently she could have burned a hole through it. "Billybob? You have GOT to be kidding me!"
Epiphany shrugged. "'William Robert', how's that?"
Iris rolled her eyes and she craned her neck to see into the kennel where the wounded buzzard was resting. "You're evil, Piffy… Absolutely EVIL!"
It was Saturday, and a rather busy day in the clinic. A police officer had brought in the big bird a few hours earlier after he'd hit the poor thing with his cruiser.
Fang, who'd been sitting behind the front desk yawning and basking in the air-conditioning while Max was dealing with a few household pets from the neighborhood who had been admitted for heat exhaustion… Had been the one to take the bird from the cop, wincing as he did and grinding his teeth because the agonized and downright hateful feelings blasting from the bird's body made his head spin and his stomach churn.
When the cop asked him if he was OK, he nodded and blamed it on the heat outside… Even though he hadn't been outside since Monday.
This summer seems to be well on the way to record highs… The cop said…
Tell me about it… Fang had mumbled bitterly as he'd taken the bird back, calming it as much as he could with his powers and offering the poor avian a frozen hunk of beef to gnaw hatefully on while he took X-rays… Everything other than that had been quite simple. The bird was more dazed than injured, although a few ribs did look fractured. So, a nice rest with his hybrid half-cousins and he'd be back out in the wild… Or so Fang had thought…
Since then, 'Billy-Bob' had met Epiphany… And they'd become quite good friends…
Billy-Bob seemed to think, quite loudly, in Fang's opinion, that Epiphany had fine plumage… He also thought that Iris had 'Crow Wings'… And had begun referring to the girl as 'Female Crow' in his sensory/emotional language…
Epiphany thought it was funny as all get out.
And then the phone rang…
Fang let it ring twice before he answered it, simply because he thought the buzzard's thoughts about his daughter were getting a little out of hand and he was contemplating going in there and showing some plumage of his own!
It was different when fourteen-year-old boys thought THINGS about his daughter… Even though it pissed him off and made him want to threaten them with a long drop and a sudden stop… It was another when a five-year-old buzzard wanted to build her a freaking nest!
He jerked the phone off the hook and practically spat the whole greeting into the mouth piece;
"Ride Animal Hospital, Fa-nnnick speaking…" He dropped his head to the tabletop and bounced his brow off it a few times.
And what happened next he couldn't really explain because it was as if someone reached through the phone and grabbed him by that place where his spine became his skull and tried to suck him through the line…
The world around him trembled as if mid earthquake, he felt suddenly hot and cold, and his mouth was overflowing with hot spit. His muscles all went rigid and lax in the same moment, and all thought was blasted out of existence by a faint, reverberating sound he wasn't quite sure he had not imagined in the first place…
A heartbeat… Quick, steady, near vibrating…
A hazy room with dirty light… Filthy concrete walls where water and slime dripped down… A bed with thin stained sheets, images flickering like an old eight millimeter film that was slipping off the reel… Screams of pain and longing, fear, anger and what Fang could only call lust because it was tinged by a near sexual need…
A pale, sickly thin form in a baggy black t-shirt and frayed boxers writhing in sweat drenched agony, alternately bending in on himself and arching as if his back were being burned by a hot brand. Dirty blonde hair plastered to his waxy flushed face by sweat and tears…
Pills rattling in a bottle, and bloody chewed nails scratching at it in desperation…The face of a terribly ill young man with a messy spray of blonde hair and fuzzy, unshaven cheeks superimposed over shadowy images, pictures taped up to a wall, words scribbled in a notebook… A blurry face with pink smeared atop it like a halo… And then, a street, a busy dirty street and what reminded Fang of a reflection in a window… Clouded dying aquamarine eyes red rimmed and bloodshot… The face from before, eyes sunken and underlined with dark bruise color, watering and puffy, lips too pale, hands shaking a little too much as they clutched at the hand piece for an old payphone… A consciousness suddenly forcing its way into his head, shoving back at him as Fang's mind peered unwillingly into this… DISEASED head, with an infuriated howl, teeth gnashed, appearing sharp and wolf like as the vision shuddered and flickered between blackness and smears of color.
'GET OUT!'
When the vision finally faded Fang was no longer in the clinic…
Fang was no longer even in his own house…
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