A Bird In Hand

“Does anyone else think this is unnecessarily cruel?” Sylvia asked.

Sam curled her hand toward her gun; she noticed Dunham do the same. The three seraph-voice with them stood at the mouth of the tunnel, heads cocked, listening to what only they could hear. And then Damien stepped out into the sunlight.

“You know what they say,” he said.

“What do they say?” Jimmy was always distant, hollow-eyed, lost in his own little world.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Damien knelt, sketched invisible letters on the cement. Then he drew a knife, and Dunham flinched.

“Wait just a moment, kid,” Dunham began, and who was he to call anyone kid?

“Let him alone,” Sam said, but she flinched too when Damien sliced open his own palm, squeezed, shook his hand to spatter the blood across his invisible letters. And then he murmured under his breath, sounds from a language humans never knew and maybe were never supposed to know.

“So why aren’t we catching him?” Sylvia asked.

“Like the man said, two in the bush,” Jimmy said. He turned to Sam and smiled, and for the first time Sam saw horrifying lucidity in his eyes. “Why catch the one when he can lead us to more?”

Blood and feathers exploded overhead.

(219 words)