Free Fangs In Vain by Scott Nicholson Page B

completely obscured by clouds.
    Out at sea, amid the boiling
storm, a mighty flash of lightning revealed rows of sailing vessels: old
frigates, galleons, and schooners. They were like a flotilla out of the past,
ghost ships encroaching upon a world where they had no business.
    Except the business of taking over
the world.
    Then the lightning faded and
Sabrina wasn’t sure what she’d seen. Luke had told her about the tricks the
water played on the eyes, especially for those with great imagination.
    Still, Roy had been
summoning something.
    And he still was. He held out his
remaining flare and waved as if to signal the ships to the island and a safe
harbor.
    Now unfettered, Sabrina launched
herself at her nemesis again, this time managing a hard downstroke of wings
that sent them both hurtling out of the belfry.

 
     
    CHAPTER
ELEVEN
     
     
    Sabrina realized she enjoyed
flying, despite the circumstances. She held Roy in her arms, though his weight
threatened to drag her into a nosedive and slam into the sand below. They
plummeted toward the sandy road below.
    At the last moment, she arched her
back and angled her wings so that Roy’s feet barely skimmed the ground, and
then they were ascending into the night sky.
    “Damn you, Angel,” Roy said,
trying desperately to ram the flare in her face.
    She dodged his blows, cutting a
weaving pattern in the air. They were now a hundred feet above the abandoned
village, Sabrina gliding on the gusts of the coming storm to gain altitude.
    “Stop it or I drop you,” she said.
“I don’t know what’s inside a Gog, but I’ll bet it leaves a greasy spot down
there on Main Street.”
    “I must complete my mission,” Roy
said, still wriggling.
    “Me, too,” Sabrina said. “Too bad
for you that good always defeats evil.”
    “The hour is upon us, Sabrina
Vickers,” Roy snarled. His flare extinguished and he let is fall into darkness.
“It is the time of the Gog.”
    “Tell you what,” Sabrina shouted
into his ear as she fought against the salty headwind. “If you’re in such a
hurry for the end of the world, let me help you.”
    God had commanded people not to
kill. It was such an important commandment that it was, like, sixth on the
list, far below the important stuff like not having any other Gods before the
Big Guy, because He was a mighty and jealous God.
    So in absence of 24-hour tech
support to receive guidance on the decision, she decided that breaking Rule Six
to protect Rules One and Two was a pretty righteous deal.
    Sabrina flapped hard until she was
high over the ocean. The approaching storm frothed and spat with escalating
violence, near hurricane strength. Her hair blew wildly behind her and her
skirt fluttered. Despite her enhanced strength, her arms ached from holding
Roy, and the burn wounds stung her in several places.
    Still, she flew with determination
against the teeth of the rising wind. Roy shouted something but she couldn’t
hear him. It sounded suspiciously like “Smell the glove.”
    And then she released him.
    Roy made one quick, clawing grab
for her and slipped away, and in the last moment his eyes were wide and
bloodshot and he looked for all the world like Roy the ex-frat boy, a little too
wealthy and drunk for his own good, but relatively harmless.
    But before Sabrina could
reconsider, he was out of reach and dropping toward the frothy surface of the
Atlantic. There was a white eruption where he struck, and then he was gone.
    It could have been her
imagination, but the storm seemed to ease almost instantly. She peered into the
murky depths of the ragged clouds, but she didn’t see any ships.
    Imagination.

 
     
    CHAPTER
TWELVE
     
     
     
    She veered and glided back to the
abandoned village of Portsmouth. Cherry was still tending to Luke, although now
she had his shirt completely off and appeared to be applying the Heimlich
maneuver and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation at the same time. Except Sabrina had
never seen the Heimlich maneuver