Page 148 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
I’m not silent for long.
‘We have to take itback, Gabriel. It belongs to someone. Someoneelse.’ I have visions of the poor mother or father, forced to leave their child alone for a split second, distracted, tired or overwhelmed, now living a nightmare …
Ashleigh throws a wounded glance in my direction, then turns her pleading eyes to Gabriel. ‘We don’t have to, do we?’
‘No!’ he replies. What is this, mass hysteria? ‘It’s safer here.’ I’m not sure if the police siren is from the outside world or inside my spinning mind.
What I definitely hear is the front door slam as Joseph ambles in, oblivious. He stops dead and with that uncanny way he has, reads the room in an instant.
‘Whose baby is that?’
‘Ashleigh took it from outside the library.’ I get my story in first.
‘We can’t keep it,’ Joseph whispers, ‘all hell will break loose. Give it to me, Ash.’
Something about the way he says it. The tone of his voice. Ashleigh’seyes. Gabriel’s eyes.
Joe takes out his phone, flicks his fingers across the screen, hands it to me. I’m frozen for a moment. Will Ashleigh give him the baby? Or will she put up a fight?
Joe calmly and quietly lifts the child out of her arms.
I glance down at the phone. 666. The number of the beast? But no, Joseph had keyed in 999. I flipped the phone and tapped the red button. As I waited on the line my wings folded together, smaller and smaller, because the outside world was about to come crashing in on us.
A page torn from the novelWhite Wingsby Mark Dunning:
Gabriel clutched Celine’s hand as they tore through the hot night streets of Madrid. The fact she was barefoot and nude, save for her pure silk gown, held together by gossamer threads over her shoulders, did not stop her keeping pace with him. Her long legs and smooth thighs leapt gutters and kerbs like a gazelle crosses an arid plain before the rainy season makes the journey impossible.
Their wings carried them, unseen, as the sky above burst into light with the orange glow of the fallout. Gabriel and Celine turned, almost stopped to watch. Flames and gases reached high into the sky. Beautiful like a red diamond. The rarest of them all.
Celine breathed, captivated. The sirens began. Wailing banshees. Gabriel stood behind her, casual glances left and right. That need to appear normal. Part of the everyday world. He hugged her. They appeared like two lovers whose romantic evening has been interrupted but not even a catastrophic explosion at the embassy could blight their love. No one who saw them could guess they were behind the blast, nor that their job was still only half done.
First responders swarmed around the dying and wounded. Numerous tiny fires billowed smoke as Gabriel’s black Lamborghini Gallardo picked its way to the centre of the chaos and sighed to a halt. Celine leapt like a mayfly to open the trunk, Gabriel close behind. Their wings soared behind them to screen its contents from view. The body was barely recognisable. He was beaten, broken beyond repair. But too human forvapour-disposal. His body, connected to the earth with unbreakable chains, must be destroyed this way.
Celine, wisp-slim but ant-strong, hauled the dead BioBot from the trunk, tossed it into a nearby fire already brimming with bodies consumed beyond recognition. It sunk into the scene like a stone beneath quicksand. Like the truth sinks lower with every telling of a lie. Forever a victim of the fiery atrocity, not the fists and boots of their comrades. Finally, and just as quickly, Gabriel and Celine were gone.
Pages torn from the scriptDivineby Clive Badham:
EXT. DERELICT HOUSE – DAWN
The sun rises on an old shell of a house. It squats behind a hedge, abandoned, forgotten. The VAN in its drive … a face at the upstairs window.
INT. UPSTAIRS ROOM, DERELICT HOUSE – DAWN
Holly feeds the Baby, peers furtively out of the filthy window, down, on to the roof of the Van. She watches as Michael jumps in. The engine starts.
EXT. DERELICT HOUSE – MORNING
The Van reverses out of the drive. It roars on to the road and away in a puff of exhaust fumes.
INT. UPSTAIRS ROOM, DERELICT HOUSE – MORNING
Holly moves away from the window, places the near-empty bottle down and hoists the Baby upright. She looks at it. It holds her gaze for a long moment. Holly’s face melts into a smile and she kisses its forehead.
JONAH
It’s manipulating you.
HOLLY
