Blood Revealed by Tracy Cooper-Posey

his own cell phone and pulled up the TV app. “Channel?”
    “CNN.”
    He put the phone on the corner of the counter where they could all gather around it and see the small screen.

Chapter Six
    Simone’s and Jake’s text messages arrived almost simultaneously, exhorting Blythe to watch CNN now. She was already watching. Everyone was staring at the screen mounted in the corner of the lunchroom already, including her, even though she had been starving hungry five minutes before.
    It was Times Square. The billboards gave that away. New York was having a gray, wet day, unlike the Indian summer L.A. was staggering through. They were three hours ahead, so it was already four o’clock there and rush hour was just starting to gear up…or had been until the creature had been spotted.
    It was almost surreal to see Times Square empty of people and the traffic at a complete standstill, yet there it was on the screen.
    The focus of the cameras was a single lone figure standing on the sidewalk motionless, rain dripping from its arms…and its wings.
    Blythe began to catalogue the features almost automatically, measuring potential strengths and weaknesses. The thing, the being, had enormous wings that really did look like they were made up of big white feathers, except with the rain the feathers would be plastered down and pretty useless. Nevertheless, the being didn’t have the wings tucked up behind him—or her—where they seemed to emerge. There was a hinge in the wings and they were lifted up in a spread “M” shape, the tips of the wings spread out, as if they would straighten up with a snap at any second. The wings kept moving slowly back and forth, opening and closing. Blythe had no idea what she was looking at, although she knew without doubt that the wings were moving that way to keep them ready for sudden take off.
    The creature was feeling threatened.
    In the foreground of the camera, she could see more than a dozen of New York’s finest uniforms all huddled together behind Plexiglas riot shields, taking one slow step at a time toward the creature, while the rest of New York shrank back, watching in unnatural silence.
    Even the TV anchor wasn’t speaking.
    The creature had two legs that it stood upon, upright like a human. It had a discernable face and arms. Everything else was different. Alien.
    The face had a nose— a rather small one. There was a mouth that was vaguely human. The two eyes were huge things and even though the camera was zoomed in from far away and details were fuzzy, the eyes still looked…sad. It reminded Blythe of Manga images, of people with huge, soulful eyes. This creature’s eyes were also filled with bewilderment.
    Stop anthropomorphizing! she told herself sternly. She didn’t even know yet what this creature was called, let alone whether it felt anything like emotions or feelings. Projecting human reactions upon it could be a tactical mistake.
    The eyes did look sad. The slump in the creature’s shoulders looked dejected. The way it stood there in the rain, staring at the slowly approaching squad of policemen was almost…pathetic.
    It was wearing what looked like a metal skin. She wondered if it was a carapace, like insects had, protecting the vulnerable internal organs. Or it could simply be armor. She couldn’t make assumptions just yet.
    The top of the head was the weirdest part of it, once she had got over the wings themselves. It looked like feathers and bone were growing straight out of the top of the head. The bone stood up like long fingers, making an elongated sort of crown, while the feathers shot straight up from the forehead in an elegant V-shape that formed a peak that reminded her of birds, except these feathers were spread out, instead of brushing up into a point. It was an odd cross between a Vegas show girl’s headpiece and a woodpecker’s raked-back crest.
    “It’s gotta be one of those angel things they was talking about,” Doris Estrada said, around her